Easter Monday

To my mind, Easter came earlier than usual this year. Somehow I even managed to miss out on my favorite chocolate treat - Cadbury cream eggs.

After some investigation, I learned that Easter is based on the cycles of the moon - about 14 days after the first full moon closest to the vernal equinox, to be exact. Strictly speaking this can be anywhere between 22 March and 25 April in Western Christianity. Confused yet? This year the first full moon was 21 March, with the vernal equinox the previous day. So, Easter was the following Sunday, 23 March. The last time Easter was this early was 1913... And it won't be repeated for a whopping 220 years - 23 March 2228. So a bit of history in the making. For those of you living in the New World - Easter Monday is an official holiday in the UK!

A few more fun factoids for this Easter Monday evening...
1) The traditional act of painting eggs is called Pysanka.
2) The word Easter comes from Eostre - an Anglo-Saxon goddess of the dawn.
3) The first chocolate egg was made in 1873 by Fry's.
4) About 90 million chocolate bunnies are produced annually. Apparently, 76% of us prefer to eat the ears first.

I'll leave you with two Easter egg pictures (follow the links) from my good foodie friend, NamiNami in Estonia. She has created the most beautiful colored eggs with natural dyes:
Happy Easter
Marbled Eggs

Those of you watching the passport saga, hold on to your knickers. While I was in London, it appears the Home Office decided to return my precious. The Royal Mail have subsequently misplaced the package... Blue gnome became red gnome in a hurry on Saturday morning. Stay tuned - the district manager is going to be listening to a rather irate customer tomorrow morning.