Lent and Easter

Easter is the most important festival in the church year, more important than Christmas. People begin to get ready for Easter forty days before Easter Sunday. These forty days are called Lent, and they begin on Ash Wednesday. The day before Ash Wednesday is Pancake Day.

  During Lent, some Christians stop eating a favourite food, like sugar or chocolate. In the past, people traditionally stopped eating eggs and milk. So just before Lent began, they took all their eggs and milk and made thin round cakes called pancakes. People eat pancakes in different ways in different countries, but in Britain they usually have them with lemon juice and sugar.

  Thirty-eight days after Pancake Day is Good Friday. On this day the Romans killed Jesus Christ in Jerusalem, about two thousand years ago. Christians think that Jesus came back to life two days later, on Easter Sunday.

  Easter is now a Christian festival but the word 'Easter' comes from 'Eostre', the old name for the goddess of spring. Easter Day is the Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of spring (21 March). It is always between 22 March and 25 April.

  Many animals and birds are born in the spring, so when people started to send Easter cards in the nineteenth century, the cards often had baby sheep, rabbits, or chickens on them.

  Eggs are an important part of Easter because they mean spring and new life. On Easter Sunday, people give chocolate Easter eggs as presents. This tradition started in Europe in the early nineteenth century and came to Britain in the 1870s. Some mothers and fathers tell their children that the Easter Rabbit brings the eggs and hides them in the garden, and that the children must go outside and look for them.

  Many people also eat hot cross buns at Easter. These are a kind of bread, made with fruit and spices, and they have a white cross (+) on top. You eat them hot with butter.

  Some women and children decorate hats, called Easter bonnets. They put lots of spring flowers, rabbits, or chickens on them, and wear them in Easter bonnet parades. And of course many people go to church on Easter Day. There are lots of flowers in the churches and people sing special Easter songs.

  Easter Monday is a holiday for most people, so many watch some sport or go out for the day. Children usually have one or two weeks' holiday from school around Easter.