Caroline A Raine

Friday, April 22, 2011

Day 30. Of Chocolate and Jelly Beans

Here we are, the weekend before the semi-finalists are announced. Thank goodness it is the Easter Weekend, to take my mind off it. We are well stocked for tomorrow's egg hunt! Found a new "toy" which is a set of plastic jelly-bean-filled eggs which glow in the dark. Will set them out in the garden for the children tonight. Traditionally however, we (in South Africa) wake up on Sunday morning ... usually as dawn breaks (because the children have been up since 4.00am and have been through twice already to ask "is it time yet?" AND been sent back to bed twice). Then, because the Easter Bunny has been in the night to hide eggs in the garden, we gallop around our gardens in the morning dew getting soggy leg-ends of pyjamas and icy fingers, looking for chocolate Easter Eggs. By 7.30 am we are all back inside with pots of hot tea and trying to get a sensible breakfast into us between chocolate mouthfuls :-)  All good! I LOVE Easter.

I am fascinated by the different variations in traditions around the world. There are such a variety of activities around the actual Easter Eggs: rolling down hills, hiding or not hiding, chocolate, painted and decorated real eggs.... I've also wondered at how traditions have been past around the world, and follow various ethnic groups.

Here in South Africa, I don't know where our tradition of hiding eggs comes from: the Germanic, English or other traditions...?

The other puzzle for me is, why Americans include Jelly Beans in their Easter festivities? Would love to hear some theories.

3 comments:

Christine Murray said...

Jelly beans?! At Easter! How strange...I never knew that.

Alison DeLuca said...

Jelly beans are a huge part of Easter here in the US. The funnest sweets ever, though, were Bertie Botts's Many Flavored Beans, which include flavors like Earthworm and Soap, as well as normal lemon and butterscotch.

My daughter enjoyed tricking us with the horrible beans, which really do taste like soap and worm (at least, what I would imagine a worm to taste like.)

Caroline said...

Jelly Beans have emerged this year in South Africa as a part of the Easter fun. It's just strange to me and I was wondering about the origin and why. They certainly are fun food. Our great treat whenever we can get hold of them are Jelly Belly Beans. I remember the limited edition of Bertie Bott's Many Flavoured Beans as well as the Chocolate Frogs when the first Harry Potter film came out.

We were up early hunting for eggs in the garden. My sister who has two under 5-year-olds, was up at 5.30am and by 8.00am had managed to hide the eggs 4 times over!

Happy Easter everyone.