I almost ran over a rabbit tonight on a bike ride. It didn’t occur to me the irony in that it’s Easter Sunday (and the world is so obsessed with the Easter bunny). Heh. Did you know rabbits can run faster than a bike? They’re fast little buggers. I couldn’t catch him.

So I did a little bit of research about Easter (specifically the name and traditions over the years). I was wondering where this easter bunny came from and how he got to be so popular. There is a big article about different traditions that have sprung up over the years and here’s an interesting one from our friends in Norway:

In Norway, in addition to skiing in the mountains and painting eggs for decorating, it is tradition to solve murders at Easter. All the major television channels show crime and detective stories (such as Poirot), magazines print stories where the readers can try to figure out who did it, and many new books are published. Even the milk cartons change to have murder stories on their sides.

In the Czech Republic it gets even better:

In the Czech Republic, a tradition of whipping is carried out on Easter Monday. In the morning, males whip females with a special handmade whip called pomlázka. The pomlázka consists of eight, twelve or even twenty-four withies (willow rods) and is usually from half a meter to two meters long and decorated with coloured ribbons at the end.

It goes on:

The females can get revenge in the afternoon when they can pour a bucket of cold water on any male. The habit slightly varies across the Czech Republic.

Wow. I thought Resurrection day was overly commercialized in the U.S. I suppose it’s that way all over though.