OLD-TIME CUSTOMS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21467, 15 April 1933, Page 4 (Supplement)

OLD-TIME CUSTOMS

All over the world people colebrata the beautiful Eastertide season. Here are some of the Easter customs of different countries. if you were a boy living in England in a Sussex village on Good Friday you would play your favourite game of marbles to your heart's content. There, on that day, every small boy, and 011 up the line to old grown-ups with bent hacks, plays marbles. In fact, they consider it wrong not to play marbles on Good Friday, as they consider jt wrong to omit tho eating of plumrpudding at Christmas. If, a long time ago, you were a bcV in tho famous Bluecoat School, near London, you might be luck} - enough to bo one of the 60 boys chosen to attend church on Good Friday morning and there receive a bag of raisins and a new penny. This custom is alwa.ys carried out to the will of good old Peter Symonds, who died in the year 1660. Here in New Zealand, the tempting hot cross buns seem fairly to beckon us firom every corner during Eastertide. But, oh, in England! The buns are just pushing and crowding each other tor space to breathe. It is an old beliei that the eating of hot cross buns 011, Good Friday will keep away fire during the year. In certain parts of Italy quantitie 06 hard-boiled and decorated eggs a 1 prepared for Easter. They are and painted magnificiently. Easter morning comes these eggs piled 011 huge platters and sent to priest to be blessed and then home and the big piles are P', ac the centre of the table in the room of the house. Sometimes there « as many as 250 eggs in one pile. From Bernice Hunt, Midhirst. AC® years. (Copied).