Why Does Easter Move?
Unlike most holidays, which occur on a specific date every year, Easter can fall on any date between the 22nd March and the 25th April. This is because the date of Easter is determined by the lunar calendar (the cycles of the moon) instead of the solar calendar. Easter will always fall on the first Sunday following the full moon after the 21st March (the Paschal full moon) but if the full moon falls on a Sunday, Easter occurs the Sunday after.
Why Do We Give Eggs At Easter?
The link between eggs and Easter comes from the Christian tradition of fasting for the 40 days of lent before Easter Sunday. Even though nowadays we celebrate Easter by loading up on chocolate eggs it is actually chicken eggs that were the traditional food of Easter Sunday.
According to Christian tradition lent begins on Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day) and in tradition the lead up to Shrove Tuesday had three other days of celebration too, Egg Saturday where decorated eggs where given to children as gifts, Shrove Sunday, Callop Monday and Shrove Tuesday where the last remaining fat and egs were used up into pancakes.
During Lent the eating of all animal products (inc eggs) is forbidden but the chickens obviously keep on laying and after 40 days a large stock of eggs has accumulated when they can be eaten again on Easter Sunday.
Did you Know?
The UK parliament passed an act in 1928 to fix the date of easter as the Sunday after the second Saturday in April, it has however never been implemented. http://bit.ly/HTXbFK
According to the Guinness Book of World Records the largest easter egg weighs in at a huge 1200kg made of delicious Belgian chocolate YUM!.
43% of kids eat their first chocolate egg before Easter Sunday.
One in five children (19%) have made themselves ill because they have eaten too much chocolate during the holidays.
More than half of children (58%) consider chocolate eggs the most important part of Easter.
The average time for children to start tucking into their first chocolate Easter egg is 11am on Easter Sunday, with 30% of children eating their chocolate egg instead of breakfast.
38% of kids are unaware of the traditional reason for eating eggs at Easter.
In the UK, children receive on average 8.8 chocolate Easter eggs every year.
Research carried out by OnePoll on 2,000 parents in November 2009.
