Easter Traditions - Part Two

Click here for Easter Traditions - Part One


Egg Tapping
The clue to this Easter tradition is in the title. You hard-boil eggs and tap them together until one of them cracks. In England it is also known as egg knocking, egg pacqueing, egg jarping, or simply as dumping. Be careful when you suggest dumping though, as it can mean a few different things depending on where you are in England. On a Saturday night in Bradford, for instance, blokes get hammered, have a kebab, and do a bit of dumping on a random front garden on their way home (When you gotta go, you gotta go). It's a tradition that can trace its history back to the 15th century. Which is strange, as Egg Tapping can also be traced back to the 15th century (In Poland). An amazing coincidence.


Since 1983, a World Egg-Jarping championship takes place every Easter Sunday at Peterlee Cricket And Social Club, in County Durham. A few years ago, international outrage hit the front pages of literally no newspapers all around the world. Two contestants were banned from competing at any international and Olympic events in Egg Tapping. The unscrupulous scoundrels filled their eggs with cement.


Marksville in Louisiana claims to have the oldest official Egg Tapping event. They started their competition back in 1956. They even have different categories, from the chicken egg category, to guinea hen egg and flamingo. A new category was introduced in 2015 after scientists discovered a secret cult of seriously grumpy hedgehogs in the Amazon rainforest that squeeze out ostrich-sized eggs instead of live young. Ouch, that'll leave some stretch marks.


The Egg Dance
And again we meet up with the mighty egg. It does seem to be heavily involved with Easter festivities. I blame the Pagans. It's all their fault. Stupid symbolism about Earth's rebirth at spring, and then those early Christians had to go and adopt it, too. This time deciding it was to symbolise man's rebirth, or a giant boulder blocking the entrance to the tomb of Jesus. So it does mean you can't get away from eggs at Easter.


The Egg Dance involves dancing around eggs and trying to damage as few as possible. It can trace its history back a few thousand years to a time of a people in desperate need of a television and the internet.


In 1498, the very first reality dance show happened. I believe Bruce Forsyth was the host. Yes, he's that old. A hundred eggs were scattered over the sand and each potential bride and groom were forced to take hands and dance. Dance, I say. Dance little monkeys. Dance. Dance like your feet are on fire. If they completed the dance without breaking the egg, it would go to the judges to make a decision, and when Simon Cowell couldn't decide, it went to a public telephone vote to see if they made it into the next round and be allowed to marry. The first winners were Margaret of Austria and Philibert of Savoy.


Rouketopolemos - The Rocket War
This is one of the more interesting traditions and it thankfully doesn't involve an egg. In the quiet town of Vrontados, on the Greek island of Chios, Easter gets noisy. Very noisy. At the stroke of midnight, before Easter Sunday begins in earnest, two rival churches, St. Mark's and Panaghia Ereithiani, conduct a Rocket War. They fire thousands, and I mean thousands, of home-made rockets across the town in an attempt to hit the bell tower of the opposition church. The tradition dates back to the Ottoman era and they originally used real cannons stuffed with hedgehogs, until those were outlawed in 1889. Each church needs to score a direct hit on the belfry and the hits are counted the following day to see who wins. Every year they both declare themselves the winner, and each vows to get their vengeance the following year. And so it continues.


You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off Okay, had to get a "My Cocaine" quote in for this tradition. And this has got to be one of the best traditions, ever.





Click Here For Easter Traditions Part 3


Click Here For 5 Fun Facts About Easter Eggs