Stuff You Should Know - Thanks, Easter Bunny! Bock Bock!

Episode Date: April 2, 2015

Happy Easter from Stuff You Should Know! Learn all about Easter, from its humble beginnings as a pagan holiday to the multi-billion dollar industry it is today. We'll cover the Biblical and religious aspects, along with the origins of some of Easter's greatest traditions. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Munga Shatikler and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-Pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too.

Just a Skyline drive on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Attention Bachelor Nation, he's back. The host of some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison. During two decades in reality TV, Chris saw it all, and now he's telling all. It's going to be difficult at times, it'll be funny, we'll push the envelope, we have a lot to talk about. Welcome to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Ahoy, ahoy, and fiddle-dee-dee. Welcome to the podcast. Wow. That was giving the traditional Easter greeting. That's it? Yeah.

And then how Mr. Burns answered his phone? Ahoy, ahoy, ahoy, yeah, because that was what they did when the phone was first invented. Right. That was funny. I said that for, actually my first cell phone said ahoy, ahoy on it, when it was super advanced and you could program something on your home screen. So that would flash when somebody was calling you? Yeah.

Ooh, that's high tech. Yeah, at the time. My little sprint flip phone. Brick phone? Yeah. Well, like I was saying, happy Easter, Chuck. Thanks. Ahoy, ahoy, fiddle-dee-dee.

Do you do anything for Easter these days? Not really. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we got like a basket, a traditional Easter basket. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, we do that. Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's not like we just don't observe it at all. Like me. Have you noticed though that like a lot more stores close on Easter now than they used to? I have not noticed. It seems to have like been a recent occurrence like the last couple years. Oh, yeah? I haven't noticed.

Yeah. It's weird, I think. Is it off-putting? It's not off-putting unless you're like trying to buy something, but it's more just like, when did this start? Yeah. That's my whole thing. Right.

When did this start? Yeah, like you didn't get the memo. No one asked you. No. And usually, you know, there's a national conversation about whether to close stores or not, we'll do an episode on it sometimes, that kind of thing, but this one just slipped past me. So Easter has caught me by surprise, or at least closing the stores on it.

Yeah, I don't do anything. I used to, you know, do the whole spiel. When you were a little kid? Yeah, of course, growing up and then the Sunrise Services as a young Baptist, we would climb Stone Mountain. Oh, I'll bet that was pretty. It was very pretty, actually. Climbing Stone Mountain in the dark wasn't so much fun.

I was always like, yeah, it's kind of dangerous. Well, there were flashlights and plenty of people around. Oh, okay. All right. That's a good thing about being in the church. They would pick you up and carry you if you broke your leg. Well, that's why there was only one set of footsteps. That's right.

Oh, yeah. Well, back when I was a kid, we get the Easter basket with like one or two maybe little presents in there. Sure. Yeah. I got the break in to Electric Boogaloo soundtrack on cassette. Did you really? Easter.

Probably my best Easter present of all time. Yeah. Yeah, and we also observed the tradition of dressing up even more than you would normally for a Sunday church, like your special Easter clothes. Like my... You'd put on a tuxedo and rub lobster on it or something like that. No, it would usually be like, you know, I got some new pink suspenders and... Well, that's actually an old tradition.

Pink suspenders? Well, no, but like a new outfit. Yeah, exactly. That's what I mean. Did you realize that you were following like an ancient Anglo tradition? Yeah. My mom taught me all about ancient Anglo traditions. That was just...

Easter was just a little more special so you would dress up a little more, basically. Yeah, I got you. You know, I got my new paisley tie that I have to bust out for Easter to go with my mullet. Yeah. I'm not allowed to buy anything new, but you remixed me comb my hair before I'm allowed to search for the Easter basket. Oh, well, that's nice. Well, let's talk stuff.

Yeah. Well, in researching this, it came down to a couple of conclusions. One is that like everything else that we hold dear, it had its roots in pagan rituals. Right. And two is that Easter is so like, it's all over the map, man. Like we could do 10 episodes on Easter. Let's do it. And different traditions and like when it falls according to who you are and it's just

crazy in its variety. Agreed. And like when Jerry asked when she first came and she said, when's Easter? And we're like, who knows? Could be in March. Could be in April. The Ecclesiastical Council knows. Because they're crunching the numbers.

Yeah. So go ahead and drop the dope there. Okay. So the dope is that Easter can conceivably fall any time between March 21st, the vernal equinox and April 25th. That's right. And it follows after the Paschal Moon, which is a full moon. But if you think you're following along so far, prepare to be thrown from the horse.

Because the Paschal full moon isn't necessarily an actual full moon that you can see. Yeah. It's not necessarily the astronomical full moon. No. It was at one point in time based on astronomical lunar cycles. But they have since been decoupled from what we currently understand. And so now Easter supposedly falls on the first Sunday after the Paschal Moon, which is the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

That's right. But there may not be a full moon anywhere in sight, as far as you can tell. Right. But if you're a churchy type who's in charge of crunching these numbers, you know when the Paschal Moon comes and goes, and that's when Easter will be. Is that the same as the Ecclesiastical Moon and such another name for it? Yeah, the Paschal Moon is a type of Ecclesiastical Moon. Okay, gotcha.

Ecclesiastical Moon is this church-based lunar cycle that in the Paschal Moon in particular is the full moon that comes after the vernal equinox. And Paschal comes from the Greek for Passover. So it's the Passover Moon. And that makes sense because Easter was originally tied to Passover. That's right. It was the first Sunday after Passover, right? Yeah, and then in 1582 as part of the Gregorian calendar, Pope Gregory the 13th laid down

the decree. But still it gets more confusing because if you are Eastern Orthodox, you might follow the Julian calendar. It's the calendar that's slicing a thin little strip. What is wrong with me? The Julian calendar. And that can be like a month later. You'll be celebrating Easter.

You'll be following the Julian calendar. Right. That was the one that predated the Gregorian calendar. That's right. And there's actually some really interesting stuff about those. We should do one on calendars sometime. Oh man, it's so vast. Yeah, and weird.

Yeah, and I like to keep my calendar simple. Well, yeah. You know. Who doesn't? I mean, that's the point. Seven days, month, 12 months. What else do you need? Boom.

You go further out than that. It gets murky. Yeah. So, again, we have no idea when Easter falls this year, but we can tell you for certain it will fall between March 21st and April 25th. For all the reasons we just said. March 22, March 21st. March 21st, which is the vernal equinox.

So there you go. So all of this is to say that Easter, if you're not getting the idea yet that we're using words like ecclesiastical and a word that's derived from the Greek for Passover, Easter is a very ancient tradition and custom in Christianity. But it's not mentioned in the Bible. The whole crucifixion death and resurrection of Jesus, which is what the Easter season is meant to commemorate, it's all in there. But they don't go and then go forth and celebrate this.

That's not in there. Right. And that is because it was co-opted and absorbed by the Christian church from ancient, even more ancient, pagan holidays and rituals. Well, I think it initially was kind of like they celebrated it right around Passover. I think it was kind of one of those things where like, hey, we've got this thing. We're commemorating at about the same time you're used to commemorating Passover. So I know you're born Jewish and your mother's going to be disappointed, but come over to

the Christian side and then later on, when it spread out into Europe, it kind of took on all of the other stuff as well. Yeah, but even biblical scholars and most historians will agree that it was originally a pagan festival. And the word Easter is from Saxon, the Saxon in origin, E-A-S-T-R-A, Istra, the goddess of spring, and sacrifices were made in her honor around the same time as Passover, like you were saying. Yeah.

So by the eighth century, Anglo-Saxons basically co-opted this name to coincide with the celebration of Christ's resurrection. Yeah. Boom. So there's this article in The Guardian about the pagan roots of Easter and the author, I don't remember her name, but she basically says like, you can take it even further back than that to like Egypt and Mesopotamia. And if you've seen Zeitgeist, which I realize is not the most credible movie on the planet,

but it's interesting and there are some interesting conclusions and comparisons drawn between resurrection myths of the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians and others and the ones that celebrate Easter and the resurrection of Christ. And this author makes the case that you can take the origins of Easter that far back even. But then as it kind of went along and along and along, it just picked up local traditions or absorbed or folded in local traditions until we have this Easter that we understand today, which includes the Easter Bunny. And the Easter Bunny apparently is born out of that pagan ritual, the vernal equinox ritual,

spring ritual for, how do you pronounce her name? The goddess of fertility and renewal? Esther? Oh, yeah. Esther? Estra. Estra. Her symbol was the hair, which became the rabbit, I guess, which are two different things,

by the way. Yes, they are. And so nowadays we have the Easter Bunny, which is a magical bunny that can lay eggs. Yeah. And Germanic, of course, the Germans always have their finger and everything, like Christmas and all these holidays. They always have their finger and everything, what does that even mean? It is said that Ostara healed a wounded bird she found in the woods by changing it to a

hair and it was still partially a bird though and the hair showed its gratitude in return to the goddess by laying eggs as gifts, so that's also, and like we said, there's, while people agree that it is pagan in origins, there are many, many stories and no one can settle on the one saying no, it was Ishtar, but Ishtar is one of them that they think could have been the original, had its roots there. Yeah. Now, if you're a Christian and you don't have your hands clamped to your ears and they're stomping your feet and like go, really loud right now, you're probably saying, hold on

fellas. Yes, the Easter Bunny, not Christian in origin, the Easter egg, not necessarily Christian in origin. Yes, there's a lot of pagan land rituals, nature rituals that are incorporated in, but if you take the whole thing back to the original, as far as Christianity goes, what the whole thing is celebrating or observing is the life, death and resurrection of Christ. That's right. And so specific days over the Easter holiday have been set aside to commemorate this process

that took place about 30 CE. Yeah, and even historians that say, no, it's pagan in origin and it was maybe Ishtar, they're not saying that Christ wasn't a person who was crucified and they're saying that there were so many parallels that all these things kind of became crunched together at one point. It was co-opted. I'm trying to be respectful here, you know? Yeah. Does that make sense?

Sure. It's like they're not saying that it doesn't exist, but it was a pattern, a widespread pattern in Christians like just kind of absorbed it, the celebration part. In this Guardian article again, and I think it's also in Zeitgeist, you can take it back even further before Mesopotamians and Egyptians ever existed and say that there's legends of the sun, and so on, dying and then being resurrected and that you could connect those things to the sun as you went, dying as winter sets in and then being resurrected in the spring and connecting that with being crucified on the cross to the southern cross constellation.

So these are possibly very, very ancient conceptions. Yeah, and there are many, many stories of important people dying and being resurrected, and some were born on December 25th, too. So if we have offended you, we apologize, we weren't trying to, as a matter of fact, we just did a lot of tap dancing if you ask me. Yeah, I mean, it's history. Sure. So we'll get back to Easter in the Christian observance of Easter right after this.

It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all, and now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me.

What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day, truly every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment

I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in, and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, we are back, and like I said a little while ago, Easter in the Christian tradition commemorates the life, the death, and the resurrection of Christ.

And so days are set aside to commemorate specific dates and specific events in Christ's life. And they're actually believed, at least by Christians, and I think some historians as well, to kind of closely resemble the days of the week that these things happened. Yeah, I mean, there's a whole Easter season. Right. You know? Yeah, so the Easter season is technically 46 days long. And most people think, well, Lent is the Easter season, and that's 40 days long.

True. But there are six Sundays in the Easter season, Easter Sunday being the sixth one. And those are considered special days where Lent doesn't apply. They exist outside of Lent because they're meant to be celebratory masses. That's right. So you technically don't have to observe your Lenten fast on these days. Yeah, and Lenten was the original Middle English, which is where Lent came from, in spring.

Oh, I thought it meant I'm not eating chocolate right now. Well, it might for some people. So let's talk about the season. Lent, we mentioned, six weeks, well, let's back up a little bit. Should we talk about Shrove Tuesday first? Yes. Okay. You might know it is Fat Tuesday.

Or Mardi Gras. Yeah, which in, I think, Fat Tuesday came from France when they would eat all the fatty foods ahead of Lent. Right. So basically, you know, when you go through Lent, what you're supposed to do is sacrifice something or maybe many things. Right, because you're commemorating Jesus' fast 40 days after being baptized. That's right.

And practically speaking, back in the day, I guess Thomas Aquinas and some of his buds decided that when you are fasting for Lent, you're abstaining from food that is killed. So you're not eating chicken or duck or pig or any animal, cow, anything that you kill to eat. Yeah, fish. They decide fish, too. Don't get me started on fish. They decided that, oh, after thinking about this and talking about it and discussing it

and having councils, and finally, they came to a decree that not only is the food that you have to kill forbidden food during Lent, the products from those food are as well. So basically they're saying, like, if you're an observant Christian, you go vegan for the 46 days or 40 days of Lent. That's right. And people, though, just choose symbolically to, like you said, I'm going to give up chocolate, just something that they love. I'm going to make a sacrifice, and I'm going to give it up for Lent.

Right. But the point of Shrove Tuesday is this is the last day before Lent. You don't want all this food to go to waste, so you make a bunch of stuff, and you eat all of your supply, and you get fat, and then you go into the Lent season and Lent fast, right? Yeah, the UK, like I'd never heard of Shrove Tuesday, but it's big in the UK. The pancakes are the traditional meal because they contain fatty milk and eggs and things like that.

Yeah, and eggs are forbidden because they're a product of those animals you kill. Well, and stuff that would go bad over the next 40 days. So it's also a way to not waste your food. Exactly. And it's the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, which is next. So Ash Wednesday is the first day of the Lent and fast. That's right. And basically, you're going into this fast, and you're just kind of becoming uber Christian

at that moment. Like you're taking on just this super Christian persona, and you're like, it's very solemn, and to commemorate it, you get a cross of ashes placed on your forehead, and the cross is made from the palm fronds from last year's Palm Sunday service. Yeah, it should be. The penitents will talk about later, but they save them, they burn them, and they use the ash of these blessed fronds to put crosses on the foreheads of the penitents the next Ash Wednesday.

Yeah, and the palm fronds are significant as what they use to fan Jesus when he was resurrected. Correct? No. When he wrote into Jerusalem on a donkey and I thought it was after the resurrection. No. No. But when he wrote into Jerusalem triumphantly to take his title as the king of kings. Gotcha.

So they wave palm fronds. Yeah, they were like, Jesus is here. That's the impression I have of the palm fronds. Man, I was really paying attention in confirmation class. You sure were. So quickly, if you see someone, if you're not very religious, if you see someone with ashes on their head, anytime in the spring, don't say, hey, you've got something on your head.

Well, yeah. Don't do that. Yeah. Because it's there for a reason. Yeah. All right. Where are we now? We are at Lent.

Yeah. So we're in the middle of Lent. You're starting to think, wow, some eggs would be great. I wish I had some shrove cakes or anything made from an animal or animal itself. Or you're not saying that. Maybe you're just fine with it. Yeah. There's a lot of people who don't necessarily follow that traditional vegan fast, but will

give up something for Lent, chocolate, candy. I always tried homework. It never worked. Did you really? Yeah. Yeah. Just jokingly. I'd be like, I'm going to give up homework.

Okay. I never, even growing up in the church, I never observed. Maybe it was Baptist didn't observe it as much, but I never observed Lent. It was big time Catholic. Oh, sure. Especially with my family. It was like, you got to give up something. So typically you'll give up chocolate and you give up chocolate and then when Easter Sunday

comes along and Lent is over, yeah, you get chocolate all over your face, which is actually following in a pretty old tradition because that's where Easter eggs came from, the giving of Easter eggs. It was a forbidden food that you couldn't have during Lent. So then when Easter Sunday came, people would give each other eggs as gifts like, hey, enjoy the heck out of this egg because you haven't had one in 40 days. Yeah. And the egg obviously also being a symbol of birth.

New life. Spring. Pagan, vernal rituals, perhaps. So now we are at Palm Sunday. That's right. And then like we said, this commemorates Jesus triumphantly coming into Jerusalem to claim his title and people wave palms to welcome him in. And then so people have palm fronds at Palm Sunday services.

And remember, they hang on to those and burn them and use them for the next Easter's Ash Wednesday. That's right. So this is the last Sunday before Easter. I have palm fronds in my yard. You should sell them to some Christians. I was going to give them away. Oh, I guess you could do that too.

Yeah. But last year's palm fronds are now hanging dead on my palm tree. Well, they don't have to be a year old. It's just the ones that were used during the Palm Sunday service and were blessed last year. So they probably wouldn't want my palms. They don't want your old palms. You want like fresh ones for Palm Sunday.

All right. Yeah. So this is the old for the following Ash Wednesday. Gotcha. A year later. That's right. And holy water, I think we mentioned, is used with the ashes to put on the forehead. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Makes a little... Very important. ...must be like a paste. Yeah. ...chircoli paste. Okay. Then we're at Mondi Thursday.

Yeah. The wildly underrated Mondi Thursday. Why is it wildly underrated? Because you never hear about it. It's true. You know? I didn't know anything about it until we researched this. Yeah, Mondi spelling, M-A-U-N-D-Y, not Monday Thursday, that'd be weird.

Right. And a Mond, or manned, is a basket, and they were used by fishermen to put their fish in. So many, many years ago, there was a fair held in Norwich or Norfolk today, and basically a big just sale where like a flea market, and the fishermen would carry their life. It's just flea market associated with Easter's hilarious. Yeah, it is. People would sell their wares, you know? Right.

Or let's call it a, not a flea market, but what do you call it when they have the... Farmers market? Yeah, like a farmers market. Sure. There you go. Or like a market. Yeah, but they were selling stuff from the farm. Yeah.

But they also had like clothing and stuff too, so it was... Hey, good point. Flea market. Kind of like a supermarket. Okay, it's a supermarket. The fishermen obviously would put the fish in their mons, and that's basically where the name came from. Yeah.

And it's kind of that simple. Yeah. Everybody would just come together and... You'd buy new clothes. You would buy new clothes. And that's where that ancient tradition that your mom had you follow with your pink suspenders. Something new. The Easter bonnet, they believe came from that too.

New little Easter dress or Easter shoes or something like that. Having something new on Easter, customarily, you'll buy that on Maundy Thursday, or at the very least, it came out of the Maundy Thursday market from the old English. That's right. And the other tradition we had was to sneer at all the people who would show up for church who we never saw the rest of the year. Oh, yeah. We'd be like, oh, I remember that guy.

Easter and Christmas. Saw him last... Yeah, I saw him a few months ago. There's a whole sub-soul, a sub-side of Christians that are like Easter Christmas Christians. That's right. They just go for the two big ones. I remember them. So you judge, huh?

I did. It was so wrong. I cast the out. Are we at Good Friday yet? Finally. Please tell me we're at Good Friday. That day, back in the ancient times, the first two centuries, good and God were sort of synonymous. And I guess, is that where the word good comes from?

I would guess so. As a descriptor of God? Yes. They couldn't be bothered to keep that second O in. That's right. But good Friday is the commemoration of the crucifixion on the cross. It's actually Day of Crucifixion. And it is somber, but they want to observe the peace and not necessarily the sadness.

All right. It's not supposed to be a day of mourning. No. No. But it's still somber. I don't know how you put it. I remember Good Friday Masses. I can't quite describe the tone of them, but yeah, it's not...

You're not celebrating. Right. But you're also not... Crying. It's a little more serious though, maybe? Yeah. Okay. And it's just so interesting these days, these holy days during the Easter season.

You learn so much. Because the whole thing is like this happened this day. Like on a Friday, they're pretty sure that Christ was crucified on a Friday. Because remember the Romans were in charge of actually executing them, and they kept excellent records. So we have a pretty good idea of all of this stuff. So you just learn so much, like the stations of the cross. Did you guys do that?

I don't think so. Any Catholic church has different places. They can be really elaborate. They can be in stained glass. They can be just a little number or something like that. Yeah. It's a station of the cross, and it follows Christ's path while he's carrying the crucifix and being tortured along the way up to cavalry and is placed on the cross.

And it's all just steeping this ancient tradition into you, this young inculcate. But at the same time, if you're just paying attention, it's really interesting historically as well. Sure. And you learn it over and over and over and over again because you hear the same thing every Easter. Yeah. I think that's part of the idea is you get it ingrained in you so deeply.

We should have just called this former Baptist and former Catholic hang on by the skin of their teeth. Well, let's keep everybody else hanging, and let's break before Easter, huh? Yeah, let's do it. Attention Bachelor Nation. He's back. The man who hosted some of America's most dramatic TV moments returns with a brand new tell all podcast, the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison.

It's going to be difficult at times. It'll be funny. We'll push the envelope. But I promise you this, we have a lot to talk about. For two decades, Chris Harrison saw it all. And now he's sharing the things he can't unsee. I'm looking forward to getting this off my shoulders and repairing this, moving forward and letting everybody hear from me.

What does Chris Harrison have to say now? You're going to want to find out. I have not spoken publicly for two years about this, and I have a lot of thoughts. I think about this every day. Truly, every day of my life, I think about this and what I want to say. Listen to the most dramatic podcast ever with Chris Harrison on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment

I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Patrick Curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop.

But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Find the Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, Chuck, we're back. Let's get to the fun stuff. It's Easter. That's right. Easter, so we said Good Friday isn't, it's not a day of morning, but it's a somber day. Yeah. Easter is the exact opposite of that. First of all, we should say, yeah, it's Saturday off.

Now it's Sunday. It's Easter Sunday, and it's a day of celebration. Yeah. A lot of fun. In your family, you might have Easter egg hunts. Yeah. I looked up the origin of the hunt itself, and I couldn't find for sure because I don't think they know for sure.

But there are some historians who think they can trace it to Martin Luther, the Protestant Christian reformer. He's supposedly the guy who invented the Christmas tree, too. Wow, man. Look at that. Got a long legacy. The Christmas tree and the Easter egg hunt? Yeah.

How about that? So Easter egg, he supposedly definitely had Easter egg hunts, supposedly definitely, where he hid eggs, men hid eggs, and women and children would look for the eggs, and they think it may be tied with people looking and hunting for Jesus' tomb. But that isn't verified because some of these traditions, no one can trace back the exact origin. But yeah, but if it was Martin Luther, I mean, that wasn't too terribly long ago. No, that's a good point.

You mentioned eggs, and we talked about eggs being a symbol of newness and fertility and rebirth. This goes back to dying eggs, goes back to ancient Egypt and the Persians who would die eggs and exchange them with friends. Like you said, as a reminder of the resurrection, and I guess just to make a plain white or brown egg look a little more fancy, they died them, colorful. Yeah, and so eggs are also customarily dyed red to symbolize the blood of Christ. They're also dyed green in Germany and Austria.

Yeah. I looked all over for this. The only reason I could find is that they're meant to symbolize the bitter herbs that Christ was forced to eat while he was on the cross. Interesting. Pretty melancholy, huh? Yeah, but I think in Germany they still do that on Wednesday. Monday, Thursday.

Oh, on Monday, Thursday? Yep. Green Egg Day. I should also give a shout out, Chuck, to our slideshow on awesome Easter eggs. Yeah. We'll definitely post that on the podcast page. Yeah, and scary Easter bunnies. Yeah.

You had a couple of good Easter ones. We'll put those both up. Those are good. There are some scary Easter bunnies out there. Hot cross buns. Again, not a part of my Baptist upbringing. No. Did you guys have hot cross buns?

No, that's pretty British, and they had them in New Zealand. I'd never seen them before in person in New Zealand, yeah. Yeah, I haven't either. But yeah, apparently they're sweet buns. Yeah, custom, merely baked and eaten. And what's funny is apparently is, again, an ancient pagan Anglo tradition to bake sweet buns as an offering to the gods around the vernal equinox for the spring festival. And I guess the Christian church said, let's stop doing that again and again, and it didn't

take and finally put a cross on there, okay? Well, it killed you to put a cross on, so they put a cross on, and now you have hot cross buns. Well, supposedly the cross was there before, but it didn't symbolize that because they baked the cake in the form of a bowl for Zeus, and that was a cross to represent the horns. Yeah. But again, let's make some changes to that.

And so hot cross buns are still a thing, I've never eaten one, though. I haven't either. But apparently they're sweet. Oh, are they? Well, yeah. Are they sticky buns? I don't think they're sticky buns, but I think they're sweet. Okay.

We'll go get some. All right. And I think what I thought was pretty interesting was some of the weird traditions around the world. They're weird because they're different. Yeah, I mean, when I say weird, I just mean unusual to me here as a big dummy. Peculiar. Yeah.

Nothing inherently is weird about any of this. In Bulgaria, they had a little thing called egg tapping, but they still do. Yeah. And it's basically like the old pencil game used to play in elementary school. The old stab your buddy in the arm with a pencil. Nope. When you would play the pencil popper game, when you would try and break the other guy's pencil, and they would try to break yours, it's basically what you do with eggs.

You take hardboiled eggs and you tap the other person's egg, hoping to crack their egg, but not your own. I got you. And you keep doing this until you get your egg cracked and then you're out. And the last person in Bulgaria who has an uncracked egg is said to have good luck throughout the year. Prosperity. They get a $50 gift card to Longhorn Stakes.

That's right. There's another cute Bulgarian tradition to Chuck that where the grandmother, while she's coloring eggs with the kids, will color one red and have the kids come over and she rubs it on their cheeks in order to bestow health and robustness to them, like rosy cheeks. Yeah. And the cutest thing you've ever heard. It's adorable. Especially if they're wearing pink suspenders at the time.

That's right. And especially if the dye is made from a non-toxic substance. It's got lead and mercury in it, their teeth just immediately fall out. That would be no good. In Mexico, they have another egg game and the way I see it is they empty the egg of the yolk and the white, how you can poke the little holes and either end of an egg and blow it out. And then they put, I guess, confetti in there and then they smash them on each other's heads.

They blow the egg out and blow the confetti in. I mean, I got a one liner for everything. You do? All right. How about the U.S. where we just have parades? Yeah, I got nothing. You put me on the spot. Yeah.

Parades here in the U.S. and Atlantic City, they've had one for about close to 150 years now. Did you know that? No. I had no idea there was an Easter parade. I'd want to see that. I know that. I've heard about the New York one.

There's a New York Easter parade? Yeah. I think Fifth Avenue has an Easter parade. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I see that. And Irving Berlin has a song called Easter Parade. Yeah.

And of course, the big White House Easter roll. I knew about this. I always thought it was just the Easter egg hunt, though. I didn't know about the Easter egg roll. Yeah, I think it's part of it. Were you rolling Easter egg across the south lawn of the White House? It's kind of like track and field day. No, that's the egg toss field day.

Well, the whole thing altogether. Oh, right. There's like a hunt. There's like an egg roll. There's an egg toss. There's celebrities who are on the USO tour that stop by. It's like field day. Yeah.

George Clooney's there. All right. Giving out eggs. And you get your commemorative egg, too. And apparently it started out. Congress had it on the Capitol. And the president, well, a specific president, rather for B Hayes said, no, this is the president's thing now.

We're moving this to the White House. And he did. Yeah. And now it's just one of those things sort of like the spearing the turkey on Thanksgiving. It's a big press up is what it is. Well, it's it's funny that you mentioned sparing the turkey on Thanksgiving because there's this other tradition in, in, where is it, Haliton Lester sure, right? In England.

Boy, this is crazy. And it's the opposite of sparing the turkey. Yeah. So there's a tradition in this little town that a wealthy woman was spared from being gored to death by a bull when a hare ran across its path and I guess distracted the bull or something. Yeah. That's why I took it.

So for some reason to thank the hare, she deeded some of her land to the local church and said, you can have this land, but you have to make sure that all of the parishioners and everyone in the town gets some hair pie, like pie made from one of these rabbit type things. Yeah. That saved her life. Yeah. That's no way to thank something for saving your life.

What to cook and eat it. Yeah. You and your ancestors are going to end up in a meat pie that we're going to make every year for everybody. Yeah. Four pounds of flour, two pounds of lard, two hairs, three pounds of onions, seven pounds of potatoes and seasoning and you have yourself a deliciously disgusting hair pie. I think it sounds good.

Yeah. Well, I don't eat rabbit and stuff, so there are meat pies really really. This ticks a lot of boxes for me. You mean I try to, I can't remember what it's called. It was a type of meat pie again in New Zealand at McDonald's and it was like this like cut up meat and gravy and cheese like pot pie basically is what you call, it was so disgustingly good. Oh, really?

Yeah. It tastes good though? Yeah, but I felt it in that McDonald's. Really bad about myself with every bite. Yeah. But it still tasted good. Do you know what meat it was? They claim beef.

Okay. Yeah. So it was a beefy gravy pie. Yes. With cheese in it. Yeah. Yeah. It sounds delicious actually.

But then here's where it gets really a little odd to me. To go along with the hair pie they have something called the bottle kicking, which is basically rugby with a beer keg. Yeah. Three beer kegs. Two of them are full of a gallon of beer each. This is part of that wealthy lady who deeded the land's request that not only did you have to serve a meat pie to everybody, you also had to give them as much ale as they wanted.

So all this is commemorated in the making of a hair pie by the people of this little town. Yep. They carry it through the town up to St. Mark's, I believe it's St. Mark's, St. Michael's Church. Yeah, St. Michael's. And the, I guess the priest, the local priest cuts the pie up, hands it out to the crowd. They take some of that pie over to another place that's called Hair Pie Bank, which is

a, not a bank, but an embankment. Yeah, it's like a procession that ends there. And that's where this bottle kicking match starts. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's a couple of neighboring villages that basically battle it out. And like we said, they're basically barrels of a ale, like I think you said to have ale, one does not. And you know, there's all the ceremony that goes into the actual starting of the match.

And then when the match starts, it's a game of sort of rugby or football, if you're American where you're trying, you know, you're carrying this thing around, running with it, trying to get it. Kicking it. Yeah. Kicking it, running with it, doing whatever you can to get it, handing it off to your friends to, uh, to advance it forward with obstacles along the way, like fists. And this is another clear example of Christianity co-opting a pagan ritual.

Yeah. This hair pie bank is an old pagan place of worship. Yeah. And if this whole thing doesn't smack of pagan tradition, like pagan festival games, I don't know what does. Plus the chairman, the guy who's running the bottle kicking competition is called the master of the stow, S-T-O-W-E. Oh, I thought he was called the wicker man.

Pretty much. Yeah. All this started at Stonehenge basically, but now it's an Easter tradition. And the master of the stow, stow means a place of worship among, uh, Anglo pagans. Yeah. So they still even call them the master of the stow. It's been dressed up that little. Yeah.

But they have a good time. And it's bizarre. And they, they advance the barrel over to their, uh, the way, the best I can see is that to their, uh, to like the line of their village, the property line of their village is like the end zone, I guess, and then they drink it. Right. And they tend to drink it in front of the losers, but just to kind of make them soar and rub it in.

If I know my friends over there, there's plenty of beer aside from those two barrels to go around. And then the one sober person is in charge of collecting all of the palm fronds from Palm Sunday and storing them until next year in that giant wicker man. Yeah. In my backyard. Well, that's Easter, Chuck. That's Easter.

If you want to know more about Easter, you can type in those that word in the search bar of howstuffworks.com. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Thank you. Easter Bunny, Bach Bach. Remember that? Yeah. That's a good one.

Uh, I'm going to call this, um, a little more on T. I got a couple of these actually in the coming weeks because boy, we got some good feedback. People love their T. Uh, greetings from Kyoto fellows. I'm a long time listener. Um, I actually started listening when I just moved to Japan in 2010 and didn't know anyone yet. So you guys kept me company. It was really great to hear you talking about matcha on your latest podcast about T because

I had no idea it was catching on state side here in Kyoto. Matcha flavored. Everything is a given. There's even a drink made of Oolong tea and matcha liqueur. Um, apparently I don't think she likes the liqueur though. She says I live down the street from where one of the three main schools of tea ceremonies to be. Uh, and while I'm here, I thought I'd add my two cents about pronouncing Japanese words.

Um, they're basically just five vowel sounds in Japanese. A is a long A like ball rather than Apple. I sounds like E. Uh, E sounds like E. O sounds like O is in rainbow. U sounds like O is in goo. And Y isn't a vowel. It will always be connected to another vowel, A, O, or U. So how about that? Okay. Uh, and she, uh, this is Nikki.

She's gearing up for Cherry Blossom Festival in Kyoto, which I bet is gorgeous. Oh yeah. And um, she said, Josh, that, uh, if you ever venture out to Kyoto again, that she would love to let you know some things that you can do while you're over there. And um, she says I love the podcast. Can't wait to the next one. And that is Nikki. Moeller.

Thanks a lot. Nikki. Yeah. Um, yeah, I can't wait to see the Cherry Blossoms there. DC's got an amazing one too. Um, yeah, it's beautiful. Lovely trees. Uh, if, and Chuck, I gotta tell you, it makes a lovely coffee too.

Starbucks over in Okinawa had a Cherry Blossom flavored coffee, which is, it's kind of a made up sweet flavor, but it is so it's not derived from the tree. I don't see how it could be, but it has like, it fits perfectly. You're like, yes, this is what an ideal cartoonish Japanese version of the taste of the Cherry Blossom would be. Wow. It's perfect. Nice.

Um, anyway, if you want to get in touch with us, you can tweet to us at SYSK Podcast. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. And as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Chauticular, and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the

White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me. And my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes, because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey guys, it's Cheekies from Cheekies and Chill Podcast, and I want to tell you about a really exciting episode. We're going to be talking to Nancy Rodriguez from Netflix's Love is Blind Season 3. Looking back at your experience, were there any red flags that you think you missed? What I saw as a weakness of his, I wanted to embrace. The way I thought of it was, whatever love I have from you is extra for me. Like I already love myself enough. Do I need you to validate me as a partner?

Yes. Is it required for me to feel good about myself? No. Listen to Cheekies and Chill on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.