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Why Do We Celebrate Easter? Meaning, Traditions and Symbols
Boast Magazine | Culture & Art
Last updated: 01 April 2026
Four Sundays before Easter starts the Easter holiday season. Palm Sunday, Holy Week, Easter Sunday, Easter Monday the main parts of this spring festival period in the Christian culture. You can learn more about Easter traditions from our article.
Palm Sunday
Palm Sunday
Four Sundays before Easter starts the Easter holiday season. On Palm Sunday, the young people went to the edge of the woods to gather pussy willow branches which they brought to the church to be blessed. The blessed branches were used for healing, chasing away evil, and according to their beliefs, they protected against lightning strikes and hail.
Eastern European peoples held their distinctive winter funeral ceremony the “kiszehajtás” on Palm Sunday. Young girls dress a life-sized doll made of straw as a bride and walk down the main street of the village to the outskirts and either throw the doll into a stream or burn it. The doll is representing winter and a food eaten during Lent, the sour soup.
After throwing the straw doll into the stream, the girls gathered fresh green sprigs and decorated their homes with them.
Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane on Maundy Thursday. Fresco in San Gimignano, Italy.
Holy Week
In traditional village life, the strictest Lenten fast was observed during Holy Week and this week was also when spring cleaning and washing was completed. The people tried to get rid of all winter’s dirt and grime. “The raven bathes his son on Good Friday” – goes the saying. This was the first day that they did the wash outdoors, the clothing dried by the sun was healthy and smelled fresh. They cleaned everything in the house, they scrubbed the attic and whitewashed the walls. Likewise the entire property – the barn, the shed, the animal pens, the yard and the gardens were cleaned.
On Maundy Thursday the church bells become mute because according to tradition they “went to Rome”. On Good Friday, the evening before Christ’s crucifixion, they extinguished all the fires and cleaned all the fireplaces. During the strictest Lenten fast they did not cook or bake any bread. Only on the third day, the day of the Resurrection did they light the “new fire” with an ancient fire lighting method: flint and steel, quartz and tinder or by rubbing two dry branches together. The people passed the new fire to their neighbours.
Blessing the fire was also held in church. Here, the spark was passed to light the pussy willow gathered on Palm Sunday and used to light candles. They not only blessed the fire before Easter but also water. The ceremony was done in church and then everyone took some of the blessed water home. The holiday was announced by the ringing of the church bells. After the procession it was no longer necessary to keep the fast.
Easter Cross
Easter Sunday
The end of the Lenten fast is demonstrated with the abundancy of food: ham, eggs, plaited loaf, and wine. Among many people, the Easter lamb was considered to be the main holiday food. In Catholic regions, it was customary to bring a sampling of all the food to church to have it blessed. Even the leftover blessed food was considered to have magical powers: the crumbs from the plaited loaf were fed to the hens, the ham bone was used to ward off evil.
Easter Procession in an old village. Hollókő, Hungary country.
The most important Easter Sunday folk custom was the walk around the borders of the village including the fields and all villagers participated. In some places they started the procession at dawn carrying the church banners with the priest leading the way. The walk around the village borders had multiple aims. Firstly, on the occasion of Easter to bring blessings to the entire village. The second reason was a practical one: during the walk they pulled weeds and cleaned the drainage ditches, cleaned the springs and renovated the border signs. Returning from the procession, the people brought green branches and sprigs home with them to decorate their houses for spring.
Easter cult foods: ham, eggs and cake.
Easter Monday
The second day of the holiday is noted throughout the Carpathian basin and neighbouring areas with a folk custom still practiced today: the Easter Sprinkling. The “throwing into water” was an important occasion already noted in The Middle Ages, which could have evolved from the ancient, pagan era ritual bathing. An ancient fertility spell is also hidden within it, in that the young men sprinkle the young women and are rewarded with an egg as a gift. According to the tradition, the Easter Monday Sprinkling took place at early dawn. The young men doused the young women at the well with buckets and hardly an item of clothing remained dry. The custom of sprinkling with scented water and cologne developed with urbanization. With this change in custom, the boys no longer set out at dawn but at any time of day. This is how the “dousing” was transformed into “sprinkling”.
Hungarian traditional Easter Eggs from Hollókő village.
Dying eggs – more precisely – “embroidering” -is a folk custom found throughout most of Europe. The most common method was batik. First, the pattern was drawn onto the egg with a stylus dipped in wax and then the egg was immersed into the coloured dye. The egg was then dried and the wax was rubbed off. The egg was red from the dye while the pattern emerged after the wax was removed. Another method was to scratch the motif into the egg after it was already dyed. Originally, Easter eggs could only be dyed red. The water from boiled onions was the most commonly used dye.
Ancient magical symbols can be found in the egg embroidery motifs. One group of motifs depicts celestial bodies with protective-protector symbols (stars, moon, sun), while on another group we find agrarian tools (plough, rake, hoe, scythe); and ancient religious motifs are also known.
In the modern world, the Easter Bunny plays a unique role among Easter symbols. Its origin probably associates it with fertility magic. In many places it has almost entirely replaced the religious symbolic Easter lamb. Nowadays the custom that the embroidered – or now only – chocolate eggs are scattered and concealed in “bunny nests” and must be discovered by the children has become very popular. A new Easter custom is the Egg Roll race. The usual winner is the person whose egg stays intact the longest.
The Easter Wheel Run is a German folk custom primarily from the northern region. A wheel made from an oak tree is filled with twigs and hay then lit and rolled down a neighbouring slope. If the wheel reaches the bottom of the slope intact, then a good harvest can be expected.
If you liked this article, maybe you would like to see our recipe about traditional Simnel Cake, one kind of dessert of the Easter Season: Simnel Cake recipe.
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He has organised youth programmes, written numerous books and textbooks, made television programmes, taught in universities and participated in conferences in Hungary and in the US.
His main goal is to keep traditions alive by understanding their common spirit that unites us all.
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