Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 April 1896 — CUSTOMS OF EASTER. [ARTICLE]

CUSTOMS OF EASTER.

Its Eggs and Legends, with Their Origin and Significance. Ae Easter represents a new birth into the beat life of all, it is easiljoseen how the pagan idea that the egg was the beginning of all kinds of life should become purified in the minds of the typical offering of good wishes and emblematic of pleasant hopes between believers in the glad Easter Day. The egg in some form or other has been the unquestioned type of new life from the veoy dawn of the Christian era. In Russia as early as 1589, eggs colored red, typifying the blood of Christ shed aa an atonement for oijf sins, were the most treasured of exchanges at Easter. Every believer went abroad at this season with his pockets well supplied with Easter eggs, as the society man of to-day attends to his well-filled card case. When two Russians met for the first time during tha Easter holidays, if they had not met on the day itself, the belated Easter compliments were passed, first fry solemnly shaking hands in silence; then the elder (or the younger, if he out-ranked the elder) would say: “The Lord is risen," and fala companion would reply: “It is true;” then they kissed each other and ceremoniously drew from their respective pockets the Easter emblem, and exchanged eggs. The Chinese claim that the world was formed of ,the two parts of an enormous egg. From the yolk of the egg stepped forth the human being whom they call Poon-too-Wong; he then waved his hand and the tfpper half of his late castife, the egg shell, went upward and became the Ooorava haav«a* of blue, the lower baW fell reversed, making the convex earth, and the white albumen became the seas. Nothing Is so strong as gentleness; nothing wo gentle as real strength. -»