sage advice, page-14

Way off topic

but close

Easter is Ooster egg (and rabbit) festival or more correctly Springfest.

It is the time of the year (after the spring equinox) when you can first eat fresh rabbit and collect fresh eggs.

Remember you have just come out of 3 month of winter with no fresh food.

Explains the egg hunt as well. Images of little kids running around looking for eggs.

If you don't wait for a bit after winter you wont have any fresh eggs and rabbits the next year - killing the first generation after winter is fatal.

The festivals leading into the winter ie: halloween at the start of the darkness, and other festivals leading up to winterfest are basically high calorie pig outs when you stock up on as much food as you can to last through winter.

Keep in mind any livestock that you carry through the winter is sharing the house/barn with you and you have to store food for them.

The practice is to kill most of your livestock except breeding stock and preserve it so that by midwinter you are ready to east the last of your fresh food and the first of your preserved food.

That last pig out is Winterfest - corrupted to become xmas.

Have a look at what is on the menu on your xmas table and you will see the old tradition still there. The last of the fresh and the first of the preserves.

Archeologists have found the skulls of people who didn't practice winterfest and springfest. Their teeth are worn out from eating dirt - they died out.

So all Anglo Saxons are descended from peoples who survived the winter - and hence all practiced the festivals.