EASTER CUSTOMS

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 131, 6 June 1925, Page 16

EASTER CUSTOMS

IN THE OLD AND NEW. WORLDS. : Easter is set apart, from all tho other special days of the year by the elaborateness of the preparations for it—not tho preparations of the individual, but' of trade. Good Friday's hot cross bun (or what is sold for the hot crosa bun in these decadent times) is a seasonal item familiar enough, but if one looks in the little shops one:, finds a wealth of goods prepared for just a single day of the year, and that "is Easter. They must start making the, things week's ahead, and their product is all gone by j Monday, except the crystal-sugar peep- ! hole eggs, of which the left-overs are likely to'be found in the corner candy I store all the wav to Christmas.

Once all men- belioved that the sun danced on Easter Day, and. they made an event of it according to their local customs tho "New York" Times"). And so each year Now York offers a variety of Easter wares to fit tho ideas of what is what in most of the corners of the Old World. Wonderful candies aye to be seen in the shops m neighbourhoods populated from Southeastern Europe. There are special confections in the Italian districts, made from recipes' that go back for centuries in Palermo and Genoa and points between. In .the German districts there are great bakings,, with marvellous art applied, so that on Easter morning the windows may display such. marvels 'as life-size gingerbread bunnies depicted (ana baked) in the act of laying real Easter eggs. It is an exhibit to'convince the most, doubting child. The old customs persist in. a. thousand out-ot-the-way shops, but the dyed Easier egg itself is having more and more a hard time of it in'New-York. The passing of the old-fashioned drug store' is one cause. The .-apothecary "of the coloured glass bottles has become the .diversified druggist,-and often he pays no attention at all to a commodity that sells for. only, ouo il;jv. 0u1..0f-365.--Stores of other kinds handle Easter, dyes, but not .always the drug .stores, oiicc the ■traditional depot for-them " Europe took tho /Easter iegg from the 1 ersians and tho Egyptians and the Hindus, but New York has a-mind of its own. Easier., however, brings even rviow \ork a sign of Easter as old as tho. festival itsclf-tho year's new flowers • -I here, arc street flower markets mat turn.dingy pavements into gardens A strategic point," such- as Fifty-ninth street,., near,the end of the Queensburo Isnd gc which leads from.the nurseries beyond tho river, becomes blooms on all four corners. Daisies, bulbs, roses hyacinths are there, cut and in pots and'on trays and among them are bowls of goldfish and little crates of live rabbits just as it was in the beginning of time