Hoppy Easter!

Basking in 6 Degrees C, time to wish those of you who celebrate it, Happy or hoppy Easter! 

The ultimate Easter bunny, Albrecht Dürer's ''The young hare'' is the centrepiece here, it doesn’t get more hoppy than that! 

Easter is (usually) celebrated in a big way here in Germany and on my first visit in 1986, I was gobsmacked to discover lots of different traditions. The one that impressed me the most then and still never fails is the well-dressing tradition especially popular in Franconian Switzerland. 

The wells in towns are transformed with swathes of green garlands and thousands of hand blown and painted eggs as you can see in my sketch above. This one is from a photo I took in Heiligenstadt on my first visit in 1986, I enjoyed touring around various places and seeing what the local townspeople had come up with. Trying to trace the origins of this tradition is a bit more tricky, there is on the one hand the suggestion that it goes back to pre-Christian times and reflects worshipping sacred springs, revered by Germanic (and other) tribes, this of course hasn’t been proven. In Franconian Switzerland the tradition definitely goes back over 100 years and may have been introduced to encourage tourism (as a history lover, I'd prefer it to be a pagan tradition, I must say). On the pagan side, well-dressing is also practiced in England in the Peak District of Derbyshire, and is also attributed to pagan worshipping of water and springs. 

Here in the North, Easter is celebrated by lighting bonfires (not this year), you gather together the old wood and scrub from the hedgerows and set it alight, burning away the evil spirits of winter! The ashes from the fires were then strewn on the fields to improve the fertility of the earth. The fire symbolises the sun, renewal, warmth and the return of the warmer times of the year. 

So much for warmth, it’s grey and cold and even worse, the Easter bunny forgot to bring me some chocolate! Well, I suppose I don’t have to worry about the ''one moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips!'', but to be honest I'd kill for a Cadburys Creme Egg right now!