Easter time is with us again.

40 days of Lent give way to Easter, which I always found scary as a youngster. From pancakes to Easter eggs. 40 days in the Wilderness to Gethsemane and thence Calvary.

Celebrating the pretty cruel execution of a young-ish guy who hadn’t seemed to have done anything wrong...quite the opposite, in fact.

Across the World different cultures celebrate Easter quite differently...

  • In Finland, children dress up and go begging in the streets with sooty faces, carrying broomsticks - a bit like Halloween.
  • In Spain, a traditional “death dance” is performed which involves a parade down the streets of the medieval town. Everyone involved is dressed in costumes and the procession ends with frightening skeletons carrying boxes of ashes.
  • More than 4,500 eggs are used to cook up a giant omelette on the streets of Haux in France.
  • On Good Friday in Portugal, large bonfire are lit. People burn straw dolls made to look like Judas on them.
  • In Greece on Easter morning, a soup made of Lamb's stomach is sometimes eaten for breakfast! The rest of the lamb is roasted and eaten for the main meal.
  • Easter in Ethiopa means Ethiopians eat a huge special sourdough bread called Dabo. They bake enough to offer a slice to everybody who visits the house. On Easter morning, the bread should be cut, after saying a prayer, by a priest or by the main man of the house.

But has the message of Easter been lost? Do you have to be Christian to understand and share that message?

What crime was Jesus charged with?

What would he think of us today?