The Hunt.

Yesterday, Easter Sunday, saw the annual egg hunt at Old Saint Paul’s. This was an indoor hunt conducted within the sumptuous halls of the Tremont Grand our beautiful, hospitable and generous next door neighbor here on Charles Street in downtown Baltimore. It was with great enthusiasm that our smallest parishioners stormed the banquet room when the glass doors were thrown open at 10:07 AM! Within minutes the swarm of hunters bedecked in their Easter finery captured their prey. Very exciting and fun for all!

I thought I would dabble a bit in a bit of Easter Egg and other secular history about this important Christian holiday and after a very superficial research project wish to put forth the following factoids.

The ancient Persians painted eggs for Nawrooz, their New Year celebration, which falls on the Spring equinox. The Nawrooz tradition has existed for at least 2,500 years.

The pre-Christian Saxons had a spring goddess called Eostre, whose feast was held on the Vernal Equinox. Her symbolic animal was the spring hare (read “bunny”). Some believe that Ēostre was always associated with eggs and hares. Hmmmm. I always wondered how rabbits and eggs came to be linked to Easter.

The English name for the festival of Easter derives from the Germanic word Eostre. It is only in Germanic languages that a derivation of Eostre occurs in the name of our Christian holiday. Most European languages use a term derived from the Hebrew pasch meaning Passover. In Spanish, for example, it is Pascua; in French, Pâques and in Dutch, Pasen.

Pope Gregory the Great reportedly directed his missionaries to absorb older pagan festivals and merge them into Christian rituals where possible. The Christian celebration of the Resurrection of Christ was ideally suited to be merged with the Pagan feast of Eostre.

In any event, the egg is an ongoing symbol of new life and that is exactly what was surrounding us yesterday at The Hunt.











Fine Print: The foregoing represents the author’s somewhat informal meanderings in topics that he is unqualified to report on. Any discovered factual errors should not be reported to the author and should be kept to oneself. Any accusations of plagiarism or the like will be disregarded totally by the writer and will not be contested nor apologized for. The same holds true for missspelllings, typos, and other nit-picky rubbish.