10 Easter Traditions Around the World

It’s Easter this weekend and while many around the world will be celebrating by eating chocolate easter eggs and setting out on easter egg hunts, some communities will be marking the days from Good Friday through to Easter Monday in far more unique ways. The following chart depicts just a handful of the more “out there” traditions and rituals that will be taking place.

Certainly the most extreme of the ten selected traditions takes place in the Philippines. In the city of San Fernando, particularly devout Christian worshippers reenact the crucifixion and flagellation of Christ, culminating with a small number even being nailed to the cross.

The Easter egg is a central theme to a couple of the traditions that make it into this map, including the tradition of making a giant omelet on Easter Monday in Haux, Gironde of France, which feeds the 1,000 residents of the town and needs more than 15,000 eggs. Meanwhile, in Germany, trees are decorated with painted eggs and ornaments - a very different kind of decoration to that of Papua New Guinea, where cigarettes and tobacco packets are hidden in trees around the church and given out to the congregation after service.

Other traditions in Europe include huge bonfires in Germany, men and boys playfully whipping girls and women with willow branches in Slovakia and children doing a kind of trick-or-treating in Sweden, where they go from door-to-door and exchange drawings or paintings for sweet treats. In Greece, clay pot hurling has become a popular custom where residents throw clay pots, known as “Botides,” off balconies when the church bells ring to mark the end of mass on Easter Sunday to represent the casting away of evil spirits, while on the Greek island of Chios, two churches that sit atop two separate hills fire homemade rockets at one another and win points for hitting the bell towers.

In Guatemala, residents of Antigua create intricate carpets to line the streets, called alfombras, made out of sawdust, pine needles and flowers, showing images of flowers, religious symbols and birds. These routes are later marched along by processions of worshippers carrying religious statues and icons.

Easter is a Christian festival that marks the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after his Crucifixion.