During Jane Austen’s day, the Easter Season

During Jane Austen’s day, the Easter Season (Easter and the 40 days following it, until Ascension Sunday, when Christ’s final ascension into heaven is celebrated) or the Easter Holidays as they are sometimes referred to, were a time of traveling and visiting Family. Every mention of Easter in her letters and novels involves travel, including her most notorious use in Pride and Prejudice when Mr. Darcy arrives at Rosings Park, to visit his aunt, Lady Catherine DuBourgh. The idea of wearing something new for Easter has its roots in Roman tradition (it was good luck to have something new to wear in the spring) and early Christianity where new converts would celebrate their baptism by wearing white for a week. The first Easter bonnets were spring bonnets which would be delightful to wear after the dark clothes of winter and somber tone of Lent.

Eggs have long been a symbol of fertility and new life and giving them as gifts in the spring, often colorfully decorated, is a centuries old custom among many people groups. Since they would not have been eaten during the weeks preceding Easter, it was common to hard boil them (in order to make them last) and have them in abundance during the week of Easter. It is said that Christians dyed their eggs red using red onion skins in order to remember the blood of Christ shed in their place.

Beautifully decorated eggs became an art form across Europe, from the Pysanky created in the Ukraine and Faberge’s gorgeous creations for the Tsar’s family in Russia, to homemade tokens created as gifts from lovers to their beloved, often trimmed in paper, lace, gold leaf, and paint or dyed with natural colors. Dyeing them in pale, pastel colors seems to come from Egypt, though tales of multicolored eggs spring from the legends surrounding Eostre, as well.
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Perhaps the most famous Easter food is the Hot Cross Bun. The first mention of these in association with Easter comes from Poor Robin’s Almanack (1733): “Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs, with one or two a penny hot cross buns”. Typically, the cross marked on the top of the bun symbolizes the cross on which Jesus died, and they are eaten on Good Friday as a build up to Easter Sunday. English tradition holds that a bun baked on Good Friday brings good luck to the household and will not mold. Many were kept throughout the year until the next batch would be made.
food/recipes/hotcrossbuns