Every year Easter comes and goes and very few of us give any thought to its conception or to how others cultures celebrate it.

Easter was originally a pagan festival which the ancient Saxons celebrated with an uproarious festival commerating their goddess of fertility and springtime. The rabbit was such a fertile creature that it was adopted as an earthly symbol, which is where the Easter bunny originated from.

In Bulgaria, Easter eggs are cracked after the midnight service and over the next few days one of the eggs is cracked on the wall of the church and then the ritual of cracking the eggs takes place before the Easter lunch.

Each person selects his or her egg. Then people take turns tapping their egg against the eggs of others. The person who ends up with the last unbroken egg is believed to have a year of good luck!

Ever feel like killing some one Easter Sunday with the stress of dinner and all the family getting together? Well, don’t in Norway because in addition to skiing in the mountains and painting eggs for decoration, it is traditional to solve murders at Easter. All the major television channels show crime and detective stories and magazines print stories where the readers can try to figure out who did it. That would make you think twice about committing a crime in Norway around that time of year!

All over the world there are Easter celebrations, with the biggest being held in New Orleans. Mardi Gras is held on the Tuesday prior to Ash Wednesday.

This celebration is a raucous carnival with costumes, fireworks and floats. This is one of the most exuberant events of the Easter calendar and was designed as a way to ‘get it all out’ before the sacrifices of Lent began.

If you ladies think you have it hard over here with getting the dinner ready and trying to keep the kids on their best behaviour, try living in the Czech Republic or Slovakia, where a tradition of whipping is carried out on Easter Monday.

In the morning males whip females with a special handmade whip. It must be mentioned that while whipping can be painful, the purpose is not to cause suffering. Rather the purpose is for males to exhibit their attraction to females: unvisited females can even feel offended.

The whipped females give a coloured egg to the male as a sign of her thanks and forgiveness. A legend says that females should be whipped in order to keep their health and fertility during the next year. In the afternoon the females can get their revenge when they can pour a bucket of cold water on any male!

Happy Easter, Everyone.