THROUGHOUT rural Italy, the first thing many families eat on Easter morning is a giant frittata made from uova benedetta, eggs blessed on the day before Easter, when the village priest goes around giving each farmhouse a benediction. One Easter, on a farm outside the old Samnite town of Venafro in Molise, I shared a 40-egg frittata made by the farmer's wife. It wasn't the best frittata I ever had, but it surely was the holiest.

As the dull winter landscape of the Mediterranean breaks into fresh green life, the exuberance of holiday feasting neatly matches the exuberance of nature. The magic and mystery of Easter and Passover are firmly grounded in the realities of a Mediterranean springtime. The artichokes, asparagus, young fava beans and fresh green peas on the Easter table reflect that, as do the eggs that have piled up, uneaten throughout Lent, in the family larder.

Even for those who no longer observe the traditional 40-day fast, Holy Week brings a palpable sense of anticipation. This Sunday, unusually, Western and Orthodox Easter celebrations fall on the same day, while Passover is observed throughout Holy Week and Easter weekend.

If Passover celebrates the resurrection of a people from the death of slavery in Egypt, Easter affirms the resurrection of individual souls.

But both reflect ancient beliefs, lodged deep in the Mediterranean psyche, about the resurrection of the natural world after winter's death. (It is one reason they are movable feasts set by an agricultural calendar following the moon and the solstice rather than by a man-made date.) Scratch the surface of a Greek or Italian Easter menu and you will find foods whose close ties to springtime celebrations date back before Christianity.

Take the ubiquitous egg, universal symbol of rebirth: Italian parents and grandparents outdo one another to find the largest and most expensive chocolate eggs, the most elaborately decorated, with the most costly ''sorprese,'' little gifts concealed inside. (They used to be plastic baubles, but now, I am told, they might be a pair of gold earrings or even the keys to a new car.)

More prosaically, each region, each town, has its own distinctive bread, the staff of everyday life enriched with noble ingredients for the holiday. In the Tuscan village where I spend a part of each year it is a humble ciacia (CHA-cha, a contraction of focaccia), a brioche-like dough with chunks of pecorino cheese or pancetta liberally distributed through it. In other parts of Italy it may be a sweet dough with bits of chocolate or candied citrus peel, often with colored hard-boiled eggs embedded in the top.

The best-known Italian Easter bread is never, to my knowledge, made at home: la colomba, the dove, an elaborate confection, garnished with egg whites and almonds, in the shape of a bird with its wings spread wide, is in every supermarket, highway rest stop, bakery and fancy pastry shop throughout Italy. (Most Italian neighborhood shops in the United States have imported, commercially made colombe; for a more artisanal variety, look in Italian-style bakeries like Sullivan Street Bakery, 533 West 47th Street, (212) 265-5580.)

The dove, of course, confirmed Noah's covenant with the Lord. It is also the bird of peace for Christians. Or is it perhaps symbolic of Aphrodite, whose lover Adonis also died and was restored to new life? Like so much that has to do with Easter, the answer may well be all of the above.

In countless southern Italian towns, sweet fragrances of vanilla, cinnamon and orange blossoms mixed with rich, buttery ricotta drift from kitchen windows open to the spring breezes. Home cooks and chefs simmer peeled wheat in milk, sugar and aromatics, the first step in the lengthy preparations for pastiera di grano, the iconic Easter sweet.

Pastiera di grano -- literally grain pie -- also grew out of an excess of eggs along with ricotta made from the milk of newly freshened ewes. But it harks directly back to propitiatory offerings made in ancient, and not so ancient, times to insure a safe harvest. Traditionally the grano, or wheat, comes from an antique strain of durum wheat that must be peeled, like pearled barley, of an indigestible outer pellicle.

Peeled wheat, called grano pestato or grano pellato, and sometimes just grano per pastiera, is often available in Italian specialty shops, like Di Palo Fine Foods, 200 Grand Street (Mott Street), (212) 226-1033. Modern cooks unable to find proper grano can also substitute farro, another durum wheat variety that is also peeled. (A recipe for the pie can be found at

In Greece and some parts of Italy, women still set bowls of wheat or lentils to sprout in darkness, then bring them into the light, often right into church, on the Thursday before Easter. The symbolism is obvious, but it is less well known that this tradition goes directly back to what in ancient Greece were called gardens of Adonis, bowls of wheat grains sprouted by women who followed the cult of Aphrodite's dead lover.