On chocolate eggs, the empty tomb and the Resurrection...

What on earth do chocolates and a bunny have to do with Easter? Glad you asked.

Happy Easter to one and all!

Even if you don’t celebrate Easter and the Risen Christ as a religious obsevance, you are surrounded by the cultural expressions of the holidy. Right about now, some of you might be asking what chocolates and bunnies have to do with Easter.

It’s a question I get just about every year.

The answer, if you understand theology, and perhaps if you were trying to impart this Christian theology to an illiterate people, say 1,000 to 1,500 years ago, is everything. The origins of Easter eggs, according to some, goes much deeper, back to the earliest Christians in Mesopotamia - which would mostly include modern day Iraq but also parts of Turkey, Syria and Iran.

Christians in these areas, as early as the 2nd century AD would dye eggs, hide eggs and use them to explain the resurrection of Christ.

A hollow egg and an empty tomb…

Think of how you used to make Easter eggs as a kid or the kind of chocolate Easter eggs you would get years ago.

They were hollow, they were empty.

Why?

Because Christ’s tomb was empty on Easter.

Think of dyeing eggs as a kid. You would poke holes in them and blow out the insides before dying them. I’m not sure many kids still do that today, but the reason you did that as a child, whether you knew it or not, was to represent Christ’s empty tomb.

These were traditions, ways of teaching, that were developed to explain the Gospel message to an illiterate populace.

Eggs, like rabbits - AKA the Easter Bunny - also symbolize new life which is something on offer from Christ after his resurrection.

Connecting pancake Tuesday to those Easter eggs and all the chocolate…

There is less of a theological connection between giving chocolate at Easter and more of a cultural one - though a cultural one based in theology.

Few people today think about, or make the connection, between the the day before Ash Wednesday and giving of chocolate on Easter Sunday.

It should be as clear as…dark, muddy chocolate.

The day before Ash Wednesday has many names. You can call it Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday, Pancake Tuesday or any other myriad of names.

Historically, for Christians, the end goal was the same, to use up the fat and tasty foods you had in your pantry ahead of 40 days of fasting during Lent.

One thing that Christians of past centuries would not have eaten during Lent was choclate. Which is why, after a 40 day fast of avoiding sweet and fatty foods that the custom of giving choclates emerged.

Eventually, the feasting on chocolate to celebrate the end of the fast merged with the tradition of the eggs and we got the hollow chocolate eggs.

Many of the cultural traditions we have around religious holidays see disconnected from the holidya itself. That’s often because we have lost the meaning, the original intent, not because there isn’t a connection.

Christus resurréxit!

Vere resurréxit!