Do you remember the date of last year's Easter? Do you know when we will celebrate it next year? Probably not, because Easter doesn't have a set date. It is a movable holiday. It falls between March 22nd and April 25th. Its history goes back to the pagan celebrations of the arrival of (1) spring after a long winter.
The first day connected with Easter is (2) Pancake Day, also known as Shrove Tuesday. On this day people eat pancakes and organise pancake competitions. One of them is pancake (3) race where women with frying pans have to run fast and (4) toss pancakes at the same time. Pancake Day is the last chance for some fun before (5) Lent begins. The first day of this forty-day period of (6) fasting and prayer in preparation for Easter Sunday is (7) Ash Wednesday. This name comes from a religious practice where priests put ash on people's foreheads to remind them that they too must become ash in the end.
The Sunday before Easter, (8) Palm Sunday reminds us of the day when Christ rode into Jerusalem on a donkey and people greeted Him with palm leaves. On this day the (9) Holy Week begins. It tells us of the last days before Christ's death: (10) Maundy Thursday is the day of the Last Supper, while (11) Good Friday is the day of Christ's death on the cross. The traditional food on this day is the (12) hot cross bun - a sweet cake with a cross on top. Finally, on (13) Easter Sunday we celebrate Christ's Resurrection.
There are a lot of Easter symbols. The most important one is, of course, an (14) egg. It is a symbol of new life. Some people (15) decorate eggs, others organise egg games. One such game is an 'egg hunt', where people hide chocolate eggs for children to find. When you play 'egg-knocking', you try to break somebody else's egg with yours. The eggs, of course, have to be hard-boiled!
Where do Easter eggs come from? The Easter (16) Hare, also called the Easter Bunny, is the animal that hides Easter eggs. An old legend says that when children looked for Easter eggs they saw a rabbit and thought that it left eggs in their garden. Another Easter symbol is a (17) lamb , which reminds us of Christ's sacrifice on the cross.
Nowadays, people celebrate Easter with their families, they go to Easter parades, play egg games and enjoy the beginning of spring.
