Easter Symbols and Traditions

Easter is this coming Sunday, March 31. Several years ago I found an Easter egg dye kit stuffed in the back of my pantry. At the time, it was pretty old because my kids had outgrown it long ago. Way back when, they enjoyed dying the eggs, but never ate them. 

In addition to leaving behind the fun of dying Easter eggs, they left behind the myth of the Easter Bunny. And now that they're adults, they don't even enjoy eating Easter candy anymore. All those traditions were fun while they lasted.

Ever wonder how those traditions came about? Here are some fascinating facts from History.com:

The Easter Bunny
The Bible makes no mention of a long-eared, short-tailed creature who delivers decorated eggs to well-behaved children on Easter Sunday; nevertheless, the Easter bunny has become a prominent symbol of Christianity’s most important holiday. The exact origins of this mythical mammal are unclear, but rabbits, known to be prolific procreators, are an ancient symbol of fertility and new life. According to some sources, the Easter bunny first arrived in America in the 1700s with German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania and transported their tradition of an egg-laying hare called “Osterhase” or “Oschter Haws.” Their children made nests in which this creature could lay its colored eggs. Eventually, the custom spread across the U.S. and the fabled rabbit’s Easter morning deliveries expanded to include chocolate and other types of candy and gifts, while decorated baskets replaced nests. Additionally, children often left out carrots for the bunny in case he got hungry from all his hopping.

Easter Eggs
Easter is a religious holiday, but some of its customs, such as Easter eggs, are likely linked to pagan traditions. The egg, an ancient symbol of new life, has been associated with pagan festivals celebrating spring. From a Christian perspective, Easter eggs are said to represent Jesus’ emergence from the tomb and resurrection. Decorating eggs for Easter is a tradition that dates back to at least the 13th century, according to some sources. One explanation for this custom is that eggs were formerly a forbidden food during the Lenten season, so people would paint and decorate them to mark the end of the period of penance and fasting, then eat them on Easter as a celebration.

Easter Candy
Easter is the second best-selling candy holiday in America, after Halloween. Among the most popular sweet treats associated with this day are chocolate eggs, which date back to early 19th century Europe. Eggs have long been associated with Easter as a symbol of new life and Jesus’ resurrection. Another egg-shaped candy, the jelly bean, became associated with Easter in the 1930s (although the jelly bean’s origins reportedly date all the way back to a Biblical-era concoction called a Turkish Delight). According to the National Confectioners Association, over 16 billion jelly beans are made in the U.S. each year for Easter, enough to fill a giant egg measuring 89 feet high and 60 feet wide. For the past decade, the top-selling non-chocolate Easter candy has been the marshmallow Peep, a sugary, pastel-colored confection. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based candy manufacturer Just Born (founded by Russian immigrant Sam Born in 1923) began selling Peeps in the 1950s. The original Peeps were handmade, marshmallow-flavored yellow chicks, but other shapes and flavors were later introduced, including chocolate mousse bunnies.

For more great facts regarding the signs and symbols of Easter, click here.

Happy Easter in advance! Is any of this information new to you?

Thanks for visiting and have a great week!

Sharon Black's Going Against Type

 

Sharon Black

It was St. Patrick's Day yesterday, so today I'm republishing a guest post by Irish author Sharon Black. Her novel Going Against Type was inspired by an American movie classic! 

Going Against Type is a romantic comedy, set against the backdrop of Dublin newspapers. It’s the story of two rival columnists, who write under pen names, and who fall in love, each not knowing that they are dating the enemy!

I worked as a journalist for national newspapers in Ireland – that’s my background. Which made it easier to set the book in newspapers. But my inspiration was an old Hollywood film, Woman of the Year, starring Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. 

In Woman of the Year, Hepburn plays a high brow newspaper pundit, who rubbishes sport. Tracy is a sports columnist who leaps to its defense and attacks Hepburn. In the film, they are forced to work together, and quickly fall in love.

Going Against Type, I turned the stereotypes on their head, so my heroine, Charlotte, is a sports reporter and a bit of a tomboy. My hero, Derry, is a fashion writer and gossip columnist, and he starts the war of words and wit, when he attacks Charlotte’s column Side Swipe, after she slags off footballers who get involved with promoting big brand fashion. So the fun begins!

EXCERPT

'Sweetheart, you can't ask Derry to fly solo in a room full of couples.'
Fiona turned to smile at him.
'I'm going to invite Charlotte, my old school friend.'
'The sports writer? Yep, I can see Derry really going for her!'
'I'm not asking Derry to sail off into the sunset with her,’ Fiona said mildly. ‘She’s a smart, down-to-earth girl. And gorgeous looking!’
‘I don’t think Derry needs any help finding a girl,’ Jack said. ‘Look, don’t you get it? Derry’s ideal woman is an underwear model with the mental agility of an obtuse snail.’
Fiona couldn’t help laughing.
‘I’m not doing this just for Derry. Charlotte’s a tomboy, sure. She doesn’t suffer fools. But there’s a thin line between self-contained and lonely. Derry might rattle her cage. Shake her up a little.’

Many thanks to Sharon! Such a great story line--I love how she reversed the Tracy and Hepburn roles! To find out more about Sharon, visit her blog, sharonblackauthor.blogspot.com, and author page, Sharon Black Author Page. Thanks for visiting and have a great week!

Writing Tips From James Patterson

James Patterson

I love a good thriller, and one of my absolute favorite thriller writers is James Patterson. I admit, sometimes there's a little too much blood and violence, but he always tells such a great story I can overlook those things and just enjoy a great thrill ride!

Patterson novels are hard to put down because, not only are they exciting, they're extremely fast paced and filled with unexpected twists and turns.  

Today I thought I'd share a few tips from Patterson on writing commercial fiction found in this Publisher's Weekly article by one of his co-authors, Mark Sullivan.

According to Patterson, "We are in the business of entertainment, not edification or enlightenment...We are interested in giving the reader an intelligent thrill ride populated by outsized people we feel for.” Characters, especially heroes and villains, Sullivan explains, have to be thought about carefully. They have to be human, above all, and subjected to terrible ordeals that take them to the brink of their capacities and beyond.

“To do that," Patterson says, "our villains must be worthy opponents...The reader has to believe that the bad guy is fascinating enough, clever enough, and bad enough to defeat our hero.” Research, Sullivan learned, is the basis of great villains. It's also the basis of hero, plot, and believability. Sullivan says that Patterson is extremely well read, and his statements about writing are often peppered with references to specific authors, books, or films. In one villainous discussion, Sullivan said Patterson urged me to read the poetry of Louise Glück to get a better feel for a lacerating voice. In another they discussed the novel Perfume.

Mark Sullivan

With Patterson, exposition was severely limited. Sullivan says, "The old adage—show, not tell—was critical, and the element of surprise was paramount. Each chapter in Private Berlin had to deepen a character, advance the plot, or turn the tale on its head. You began every scene with the end in mind; and the end had better blow the reader’s mind or it would be revised or tossed."

Patterson told Sullivan at their first meeting, “What most people who attempt commercial fiction don’t understand is that you have to write the way people talk...You can’t make the prose rigid or dense and expect the normal, busy reader to turn the page, much less stick with you to the very end.”  Sullivan says that Patterson advised him to imagine an entertaining bon vivant in a bar telling our stories in a language that would appeal to every Tom, Dick, and Mary in the place. Humor helped. So did a flare for the dramatic. So did a pared-down style. Sullivan says that Patterson has been criticized for the "short chapters and the ultra-lean prose, but don’t think for a minute that it is without purpose beyond a quick read for a harried reader."

Patterson said to Sullivan, “Most writers will tell you five to 10 things about a character or a setting or an action...Fine for literature. But our approach is to pick the one or two or three that really count and discard the rest. It not only creates pace but it leaves images in the reader’s mind that are concrete and unequivocal.”

In conclusion, Sullivan says, "The sum of this advice was to sacrifice all for the story and the characters. Outlines were trusted navigational charts, yet we were free to sail in other directions as the novel evolved. But if you were going to change something, it had to be a terrific change."

"We’re after terrific, fascinating, and smart,” Patterson said. “We’re after a story that the reader can’t put down and can’t forget when they’re done, the kind people talk about to their friends.”

Don't we all wish we could write something that our readers can't put down? Do you like thrillers? If so, who's your favorite thriller writer?

Thanks for visiting and have a great week! 

Pilot Bessie Coleman

I just learned about this fascinating aviatrix while looking for a story to post for the end of Black History Month. Take a look at some of her story from Wikipedia:

Bessie Coleman was born in Atlanta, Texas, in 1892 and grew up in a family of 13 children. 

In 1915, at the age of 23, Coleman moved to Chicago, Illinois, where she lived with her brothers. In Chicago, she worked as a manicurist at the White Sox Barber Shop, where she heard stories of flying during wartime from pilots returning home from World War I. She took a second job as a restaurant manager of a chili parlor to save money in hopes of becoming a pilot herself. American flight schools of the time admitted neither women nor black people, so Robert S. Abbott, founder and publisher of the Chicago Defender newspaper, encouraged her to study abroad. Abbot publicized Coleman's quest in his newspaper and she received financial sponsorship from banker Jesse Binga and the Defender.

Bessie Coleman took a French-language class at the Berlitz Language Schools in Chicago and then traveled to Paris, France, on November 20, 1920, so that she could earn her pilot license. She learned to fly in a Nieuport 564 biplane with "a steering system that consisted of a vertical stick the thickness of a baseball bat in front of the pilot and a rudder bar under the pilot's feet."

On June 15, 1921, Coleman became the first black woman and first self-identified Native American to earn an aviation pilot's license and the first black person and first self-identified Native American to earn an international aviation license from the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. Determined to polish her skills, Coleman spent the next two months taking lessons from a French ace pilot near Paris and, in September 1921, she sailed for America. She became a media sensation when she returned to the United States.

She used her platform to do events, like parachute jumps, and give lectures, all with the aim of opening an African-American flying school. Coleman would only perform for desegregated crowds. 

On April 30, 1926, Coleman was in Jacksonville, Florida. She had recently purchased a Curtiss JN-4 (Jenny) in Dallas. Her mechanic and publicity agent, 24-year-old William D. Wills, flew the plane from Dallas in preparation for an airshow and had to make three forced landings along the way because the plane had been so poorly maintained. Upon learning this, Coleman's friends and family did not consider the aircraft safe and implored her not to fly it, but she refused. On take-off, Wills was flying the plane with Coleman in the other seat. She was planning a parachute jump for the next day and was unharnessed as she needed to look over the side to examine the terrain.

About ten minutes into the flight, the plane unexpectedly went into a dive and then a spin at 3,000 feet above the ground. Coleman was thrown from the plane at 2,000 ft (610 m), and was killed instantly when she hit the ground. Wills was unable to regain control of the plane, and it plummeted to the ground. He died upon impact. The plane exploded, bursting into flames. Although the wreckage of the plane was badly burned, it was later discovered that a wrench used to service the engine had jammed the controls. Coleman was 34 years old.

Such an accomplished woman! Tragic that she died so young. For her complete story, click here. Had you ever heard of Bessie Coleman?

Alexander Pushkin: Little Known Facts

 

Portrait of A. Pushkin by Konstantin Somov

In honor of Black History Month, today I'm featuring Russian novelist Alexander Pushkin. Some are surprised to find out he has African ancestry. Though he lived a short life, it was one of great accomplishment!

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin (1799 –1837) was a Russian author of the Romantic era and is considered the greatest Russian poet and founder of modern Russian literature.  Pushkin was born into the Russian nobility in Moscow and published his first poem at age fifteen.  He was widely recognized by the literary establishment by the time he graduated from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum.

On June 6, 1999, Russia celebrated the 200th anniversary of Pushkin's birth. A London Times headline read, "Pushkin Mania rages: Russians cash in on bicentenary of their poet's birth". Reporting from Moscow, Anna Blundy noted: "Russia has been swept by Puskhinmania in preparation for tomorrow's bicentenary of the poet's birth...Russians all know long tracts of Pushkin's work by heart, and Sunday's festival is the dominant theme of most television, and radio broadcasts, newspaper articles and advertising campaigns."

In Russia, Pushkin seems to be a combination of Shakespeare and Mozart rolled into one. As Shakespeare is to the English language, Pushkin is to Russian literature.  

But, regardless of Pushkin's greatness, according to Selwyn Cudjoe, "at the beginning of the 19th century, Pushkin's Africanness was an issue. Throughout his life, his pronounced African features-thick lips, dark skin and kinky hair-remained an issue and Pushkin was acutely aware of them. Yet, he always took pride in his African ancestry."

Pushkin's great-grandfather was Abram Petrovich Gannibal (1696–1781), a Black African page raised by Peter the Great (see more on him in last week's post, or check out the link that follows). This information is from Cudjoe's article Pushkin: Russian African Genius:

...Pushkin suffered from a sense of his own "ugliness" and the taunts of his classmates. At the lycee where he studied when he was 12, he was nicknamed "monkey". However some of his school friends called him "the Frenchman" because they thought he was a "mixture of a monkey and a tiger".

This "stain" of his blackness remained with him. In 1827, he returned to his family mansion in Mikhaylovskoe where he began his unfinished novel, The Negro of Peter the Great, based on the life of his great grandfather. In this highly fictionalized account of his ancestor Grannibal, Pushkin centered his story on "a Negro's wife, who is unfaithful to her husband, gives birth to a white child and is punished by being shut up in a convent". Even as he tells this gripping story, the sexual prowess of the black man in a white world assumes much importance.

Perhaps, it is wise that Pushkin did not finish telling this story. It would have had to come up against the scurrilous attacks of those who preferred to believe that he came from a slave background. In fact, he was forced to defend Abram's honor against the calumny of Fruddy Bulgarin, a crusading journalist. Putting the question in verse, Pushkin said: "Filyarin says he understands/That my black granddad, Gannibal/ Bought for a bottle of rum, once fell/Into a drunk sea captain's hands." To this, he responded: "My grandfather, so cheaply bought,/ The Tsar himself treated with trust/And gave him welcome at his court./ Black, but never again a slave."

Pushkin died young.  Notorious about defending his honor, he fought a total of twenty-nine duels.  Though rumored to be a womanizer, when it was reported that his wife's brother-in-law, Georges-Charles de Heeckeren d'Anthès had made attempts to seduce Pushkin's wife, Pushkin challenged d'Anthès to a duel.  Pushkin died two days later, having been shot through the spleen.  He was 37.

Are any of these facts new to you? Also, have you read any Pushkin? Thanks for visiting and have a great week!