While it's nice to know Miss Thorne considers cuffing Jewish people on the ears a "barbarism," there's sadly still a smack of superiority to this narrative of old-fashioned Easter customs. I bid you to enjoy the traditions and ignore the smugness. The egg decoration narrative fits closely to the ones Kate Seredy talks about in The Good Master.Doubtless all you young folks know why Easter is kept with rejoicings all over the Christian world. I am not going to tell you why but how; for though all Christian nations celebrate it, each has its own peculiar customs for the occasion.
I suppose your idea of Easter celebration is to decorate the church with flowers, have extra-fine music on Sunday, and on Monday have colored eggs—you hardly know why. But if you were a little fur-clad Russian you would look forward to Easter time as you here do to Christmas. You would expect to have, on Palm Sunday, presents of flowers and fruit, birds and angels, all made of wax and tied with ribbon to a palm branch (or a stick representing one). And not only these, but books and playthings, and whatever nice gifts Santa Claus brings to you here in America. The playthings you would use at once, and the palm, or rod, you would keep carefully till the next morning, when it would be your duty, or at least your privilege, to go about the house and whip all the lie-abeds, who were too sleepy, or too lazy, to go to early church. And when Easter arrived, you would have more eggs than you ever saw. Not only old Biddy's snowy-shelled baby-houses, but wonderful and beautiful things that grew in the glass-house or the porcelain-works. These would be of different sizes, ornamented with gold or colored flowers, and stuffed with candies and other nice things; or eggs made of gilt and silver paper, holding raisins and sweetmeats,—things to be hung up with ribbons, and kept with your treasures.
And funny sights you would see in St. Petersburg, though they would n't look funny to you, seeing through Russian eyes. You would see the whole city burst out into kisses! Every one kissing all his friends, at home or abroad, in the house or in the street, wherever he chanced to meet them; every general in the army kissing his officers; every captain his men. Every merchant saluting his clerks; every man his household. Even the Emperor kissing, not only his private family and his noblemen, but the generals of his army and a few private soldiers, enough to imply that he kisses the whole army. This would be a curious sight to American eyes, would it not?
But if, instead of Russia, your home were in the Emerald Isle (as poets have called Ireland), you would be careful to get up early on Easter morning, to see the sun dance when rising! You can do it in America just as well, by the way, and see it just as well, too. You need only a great deal of faith, and a small spring or bit of clear water to look into. Try it, and see.
Very different would be your Easter if your mother wore a mantilla over her head, and your father was a dark-haired Spaniard, and lived in Seville. You'd be a Roman Catholic, of course, and you would go with mamma to the grand Cathedral to see the paschal candle—a monster of the candle family, nine yards high, made of wax, and standing on a marble pedestal, and lighted by brand-new fire, struck from a flint by a priest.
Then you would hear high mass, beginning behind a great veil or curtain, and at a certain point in the ceremony, you would see the curtain snatched off, and fire-works burst out of the upper gallery, and all the twenty-four bells of the tower would ring out together in a lively peal, and all the bells of the city would join in. Then you would go into the streets, and see people shooting at stuffed figures of Judas Iscariot, hanging from ropes stretched across the street. And if you were near the ocean, and could see the ships, you would see the effigy of this same Judas hung to the ship's yard-arm, dipped in the water, and beaten over the head and shoulders when it came up.
A stranger festival you would see at this time if you were so unhappy as to belong to the Turks. At break of day, the Pacha goes to an open place, away from the city, where he thrusts a sharp knife into the throat of a ram, laid on an altar. Instantly a Jew snatches up the victim, throws it over his shoulders, and runs for a mosque. If the poor animal is alive when he reaches the sacred building, the omen is good, and every devout Turk believes that the year will be a fortunate one; but if the ram is dead, groans and laments arise—the year will be bad. That matter settled, begins a strange celebration, which I feel sure must be a painful sight to many. Every man sacrifices one or more sheep, as he is able, in the open street; the blood of the victims streams down the street, and the people dance and sing, shout, and discharge guns. This lasts for eight days.
Vastly different would be your customs if your name were Victor or Marie, and your home Paris. On Good Friday you would go with the grown-ups (if you were big enough) to the fine churches in the city, every one of which you would find decorated with flowers and other ornaments, and brilliantly lighted with hundreds of wax candles. There you would meet all your friends, also on a tour of sight-seeing. And on Easter-day you would see—mamma come out in a new bonnet!
Something not very unlike this you can see in our own fashionable churches, where it has been introduced among other French fashions, I suspect.
Another French custom, originated by so great a man as Charlemagne, was that of allowing every Christian to give an Easter-box (on the ear) to every Jew he met, as a mark of contempt. The world has nearly outgrown this barbarism, but relics still are seen in Paris, where Jews are often chased through the streets with stones, and their windows broken, on Easter-day.
Much more agreeable would be Easter among the Alps, where the joyful day is announced by beautiful hymns, accompanied by guitars, and sung by bands of musicians adorned with flowers. On hearing the music at the door, every family comes out and joins in the chorus, all rejoicing together in the happy day; then the wandering singers go on to the next house.
But in Rome you would see the most imposing Easters. Hundreds of strangers go to that city every year, to see the grand procession,—the Pope carried through the streets on the shoulders of men, sitting in his crimson chair of state, dressed in gorgeous robes, with silken canopy over his head, and preceded by two men bearing immense white fans of ostrich plumes. After celebrating high mass in St. Peter's, the Pope comes out on a balcony, and blesses the people; and in the evening, the grand dome, and all parts of the grandest church in the world, are brilliantly illuminated.
But as you are neither Spaniard nor Turk, French nor Italian, but American, you will like to know some of the queer things done about Easter-time, by our cousins over the water. In London, public festivals are nearly as rare as in our sober American towns; but in the country some of the old customs still linger.
Ceremonies begin with Palm Sunday (the last Sunday before Easter), when many Londoners "go a-palming." That is, into the country for branches of willow (since they have no palms). They come home with the soft yellow sprigs in their hats and button-holes, and bits held in their mouths. What becomes of the willow, after it has done duty as palm branches, history does not tell; but I do not suppose it is hung over the door to keep away evil, as it was of old in England, nor nailed to a balcony to preserve the house from lightning, as in Spain.
The next celebration is on Good Friday, when nearly all England is waked by the cry of "Hot cross buns!"
"One a penny buns.
Two a penny buns,
One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns!"
In the old times, every family would send out and buy some of the hot, spicy cakes with a cross stamped on the face, for the breakfast-table. This, like other old customs, is fast dying out, and buns are neither so plenty nor so nice as they used to be.
This usage has been traced by some to the pagan custom of worshiping the Queen of Heaven with cakes, which still prevails in China, Mexico, and other countries. In past days, in England, bread was baked on Good Friday to keep through the year, in the belief that a little of it in water would cure any disease. This may be the origin of the buns, which some ignorant people nowadays keep hung up in their cottages.
Easter is the great festival, and what relics of old-fashioned observances still remain, are different in different parts of the kingdom.
Long ago, tansy cakes and tansy puddings were eaten at Easter, in memory of the bitter herbs at the paschal feast. In the same days the clergy and people played ball and danced in the churches. The highest dignitaries of the church—even the archbishop—joined in this ceremony. A dean, or other official, would begin it by starting a chant, and gravely dancing around to the tune, the ball to others of the clergy who were dancing also. When this ceremony was over, the performers retired for refreshment, of which bacon—to show contempt of Jews—was a standard dish.
Of Easter Monday rites various curious relics still linger. One, called "clipping the church," is performed by children of the charity schools, amid crowds of people and shouts of joy. They place their backs against the outside of the church, and join hands till the circle is complete and the building surrounded, when the ceremony is over and they go to another church.
Another custom in Durham, is for men to go about the streets and take off a shoe from every woman they meet, unless she will pay a small fee to prevent it. The next day, as is but fair, the women retort by doing the same to men.
In some parts a still more ridiculous custom is found, called "heaving" or "lifting." On Easter Monday the men "lift" women and on Tuesday the women are the lifters. It is done thus: two strong men cross hands in the way we used to call "making a chair" in my school-days, or they carry a chair lined with white and decorated with flowers and ribbons. On meeting a woman in the street, they invite her to take a seat, and, in fact, insist upon it. They then lift her into the air three times, when she must kiss each of her lifters, and give them money besides. In the time of Edward 1, this custom was so general that even the king was "lifted."
In Kent, the young people on Easter Monday "go a pudding-pieing." That is, go to public-houses to eat pudding-pie, a dish about the size of a saucer, with raised paste rim, and custard inside.
And everywhere, and all the time, are eggs, eggs, eggs; boiled and colored; striped and mottled, and gilded; ornamented with names, or mottoes, or pictures. Common ones are variously adorned with designs drawn with a bit of tallow, which keeps the dye from taking on those parts. A better kind of decoration is to scratch the design with a sharp knife on an egg after it is dyed; landscapes, mottoes, etc., can be made very neatly.
A common game—which, perhaps, you know—is played with Easter eggs. The owner of a hardboiled Easter egg challenges any one he meets to strike eggs with him. If his egg breaks the other, it is called "the cock of one," and its owner has the broken one as a trophy. When it has broken two, it is "cock of two," and so on. If an egg which is cock of one or more is broken, the conqueror adds the number of trophies won by the victim to his own score.
The custom of making presents of eggs is said to be Persian, and to bear allusion to the "mundane egg," from which the world was fabled by certain nations to have been derived. It is a custom among Jews, Egyptians, and Hindoos, and was adopted by Christians to symbolize the Resurrection.
This feast of eggs, therefore, very properly occurs at Easter.
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