The Nevada County picayune., 1907-03-29

ing of bird songs, of the breaking of ice-bound waters. of the passing of winter, and of the return of the sun, bringing with it seedtime. and the birth of new hopes and desires. sym oolzed in the celebration of Easter
 And everywhere the egg. symbolic Of the universe and of life, of the springing forth from the germ of new forces and powers, has been in evi- dence.
 The Egyptians. the Jews, the Per sians and Hindus, the Syrians, the Burmese, the Chinese. the Australians, the Hawaiians-all have connected the egg with the creation or renewal of life
 The fire worshippers of Persia, wor- shipping Zoroaster as a prophet, be- Eeved in a first great spirit from whom came two brothers, Ormuzd and Ahriman. Ahriman, showing jealousy of his brother, Ormuzd. was condemn ed to darkness for thousands of years fingered, he longed for revenge, and when Ormuzd made an egg contain ing good genii Ahriman made another full of evil spirits, and broke the two together, so that from the beginning good and evil were mixed. In mem ory of this legend of creation, the Persians at the festival of the solar new year, held in March, exchanged eolored eggs as gifts.
 The Chinese have a story that the first man, Poo Roo Wong, came from an egg, and that having been born he used the upper part of the shell to make the heavens. while the lower part became the earth
 The Burmese tell that the first man and woman, their Adam and Eve, were matched from a single egg.
 The Syrians say that their gods from whom they were descended were matched from eggs.
 The Australians believe the earth was darkened space until one of their race threw up an egg, which exploded and became the sun.
 Hawaii, the islanders declare, was great egg which some mammoth bird dropped as it passed over the seas.
 The Egyptians regarded the egg as sacred emblem of the renovation of mankind after the food and the Jews used 1t as a type of their departure from the land of the Egyptians, and with the Paschal lamb it was a part of the Passover feast.
 The early Christians were, of course, Jewish, and when they began to observe Easter as a Christian feast gave to the egg as part of the cere monial of the season a new signifi canoe, that of the resurrection from the dead. Eggs were foebidden during Lent, and so naturally accumulated aS the hens did not stop laying. Eat ing them on Easter day signfied that lasting time was over and feasting begun, so they were connected with Joy just as Were the bells which hush ed during the period preceding Easter day, broke into joyous pealing at it's dawn.
 The name for Easter in the romance iaEguages-paques in French, pasqua in Italian. and pascua in Spanish comes through the Latin pascha. from the Chaldean form of the Hebrew name for the Passover festival. Hence the eggs are pace, pashe, paschal, or basque eggs, as well as Easter eggs.
 When the early Christians began to observe Easter as a Christian festival a controversy as to the time of it's observance, known as the Paschal controversy, and extending from the second to tae fourth centuries, arose. The Eastern churches kept it at the same time as the Jewish Passover the l4th day of the Jewish lunar month of Nissan, which most often correarant to our month of April.