Easter Sunday is coming up, which means it is almost time to bust out the egg dyeing kits, start preparing your dinner menu, and assembling your Easter baskets. The Christian holiday has been observed since the second century. Over the years, many Easter traditions have taken shape, everything from chocolate bunnies to Easter egg hunts. From coloured eggs to chocolate eggs to egg hunts, nothing says Easter like the incredible edible. Yet our modern take on collecting, dyeing, and decorating eggs comes from a tradition dating back thousands of years. Ancient cultures, including the Greeks and Egyptians, saw eggs as a sign of a new life and fertility. They used eggs in religious rituals and hung them in pagan temples for mystical purposes. Later, as Christian missionaries observed community members hunting for eggs every spring, they began using the food as a useful tool to describe resurrection. They would dye the eggs based on what colours meant to the church: yellow for resurrection, blue for love, red for the blood. Or, they would paint various scenes from the Bible on eggs and hide them. The child who found the egg would come back and tell the story painted on that egg. Like many other Easter traditions, the Easter Bunny evolved out of ancient fertility and spring celebrations. Rabbits give birth in the spring. So, in places where the fields became overrun with baby bunnies, it was natural to incorporate the rabbit as a symbol for spring and, eventually, Easter. According to a very old German story, a poor woman who loved children would hide brightly coloured eggs in her garden as Easter treats. One year, while the children searched for them, they noticed a hare hopping past and believed that the animal had left the eggs. Like the tradition of the Easter bunny, the tradition of the Easter basket likely began in Germany. Once children began to think the Easter Hare would leave goodies, they started to create small nests of leaves and branches in their gardens where the bunny could place them. Another interpretation says that the Easter basket tradition began much earlier with farmers in Middle Eastern cultures. They would reportedly bring all seedlings in a basket to be blessed, in hopes of a bountiful harvest. Actually, we can thank Lent for our big Easter feasts. Originally, Lent required people to fast for forty days, with the exclusion of Sundays. However, these days it is more commonly observed by having people give up some of their indulgences, like alcohol, caffeine, chocolate, television, or even social media. 
