WIN: Easter Egg Hunt competition

Who received the first Easter egg? Why do we give each other eggs at Easter? Or little bunnies made of chocolate?

Easter is traditionally a Christian holiday having nothing to do with eggs, bunnies or chocolate. So where do the commercial traditions of Easter eggs and bunnies come from?

The celebration of this holiday harks back to the far older origins of the festival which in the northern hemisphere was a celebration of Spring, a Sabbat to celebrate the pagan goddess Eostre’s birth to the sun god.

Today we celebrate Easter regardless of our religion with Easter Egg hunts, feasts with family and friends and a holiday which gives many a very long weekend.-

We can thank the early Christian church for that. They found that to accommodate some of the ancient pagan holidays and traditions helped to make the acceptance of Christianity easier in their quest to spread Christianity all over the world.

Here in South Africa we celebrate Easter in autumn, simply because this is the time which has become the norm for the celebration of this festival in the northern countries which colonised and Christianised the Southern lands, Easter is, unlike Christmas a movable festival, and it’s date differs each year.

Easter bunnies

The easter bunny arose originally as a symbol of fertility, everyone knows how fertile bunnies are…. they literally reproduce like, well, bunnies.

There is a long history of Easter eggs being given as gifts, the first person in the U.K. to receive an official Easter Egg was Henry VIII.

The Egg was sent by the Pope who at the time would have been Pope Paul III. If you know your history you will realise how significant a gift that would have been as Henry VIII and the Roman Catholic Church did not always see eye to eye.

Rewards

Eggs also were seen as a reward or treat after a long hard winter where food was often scarce. Later as Christians took up celebrating Easter, Christians would abstain from eating meat for the 40 days leading up to Easter called Lent. Easter then became their first chance to enjoy meat and eggs after a long time of abstinence. Nowadays chocolate is a much nicer treat than hard boiled eggs.

Join the Highway Mail Easter Egg Hunt and you could win an Easter Hamper worth R1000 courtesy of Knowles Spar.

To enter, grab this week’s copy of the Highway Mail and locate 8 separate letters within Easter eggs in 8 different adverts throughout the newspaper and solve the anagram

When you have the answer, complete the entry form below with your details along with the answer and submit.

Please do not write the answer in the comments section as this is not considered an entry. You have to fill out the attached form.

Competition closes Sunday 29 March at midnight.

A winner will be chosen via random draw and contacted on Monday 30 March. The winner must collect the prize from the Highway Mail offices in New Germany. Unclaimed prizes will be forfeited.

Terms and conditions apply.