5 common Easter questions answered

Explore little known facts about holiday

J. Scott Wilson, Contributing writer
POSTED: 1:21 AM Apr 02 2012   UPDATED: 2:00 AM Apr 04 2012
Easter bunny, eggs, basket




We'll start off with that shifting date ...

Calendar pages

No. 5: When exactly is Easter?





Now, about those eggs ...


No. 4: Why eggs?





Easter eggs, dyed eggs, colored easter eggs

No. 3: But why paint them?




And now, a hare-brained issue ...

Easter bunny, eggs, candy

No. 2: Why a bunny?

Quick! What's the thing bunnies are known for more than anything else?

If you said, "Making more bunnies," give yourself an extra chocolate egg. Rabbits have been symbols of fertility for millennia, and so having them included in a spring festival, when the earth is coming back to life and things are starting to grow makes perfect sense.

Having the Easter bunny hop through and deliver the eggs just stacked symbol on top of symbol, which if you'll look at Christmas you'll see is something that happens with a fair amount of frequency.

From a marketing standpoint, it's also a lot easier to sell cute Easter items emblazoned with a cuddly bunny rather than a homely chicken, but that's a far more modern reason for the lop's longevity.

And, finally, ever wonder why we eat what we eat at Easter dinner?


No. 1: How did ham become traditional Easter meal?

We can safely say the Easter ham doesn't have a Passover connection, for obvious reasons.

It's more likely that this comes from Europe, where the hams laid in to smoke and cure from the fall were just reaching their perfection and everyone was looking for a good excuse to crack open the smokehouses and have at them.

Like so many of our traditions, things like Easter ham come down to far more practical than mystical considerations. Like pumpkins at Halloween, we're making symbols out of what was readily available.

Lamb is another popular Easter choice, and is in fact far more likely to have been eaten at the Last Supper based on historical evidence.

Just to be safe, we'll probably cook both this year.