Peter Bromhead: Chew on it

The bun was well established long before today's association with Easter. Cartoon / Peter Bromhead

With the arrival of Easter, we thankfully mark the official end of the hot cross bun season.

I now look forward to the next onslaught in the name of Christianity: the return of the Christmas decoration hustlers.

I spotted my first hot cross bun on January 6 this year, three full months before Good Friday, the traditional day for bun consumption.

Clearly, a long run-up to Easter is considered profitable for modern-day bakeries, even if the bun eating seems pretty meaningless by the time Good Friday finally rolls around.

Revisiting historic accounts, I note that a bakery shop in 18th-century London had more than 50,000 citizens queuing up for buns on Good Friday, and that up to 240,000 were sold in a single day.

Another titbit from The Gentleman's Magazine of 1897 records that it was traditional to bake hot cross loaves on Good Friday, then hang them from the rafters, in the belief they would never go mouldy.

No doubt some clever Dick scientist will enlighten me over this quaint superstition, by explaining that adding cinnamon or cloves to the loaf chemically prevents mould developing.

Christians, sensitive to the mass marketing of today's product, should be aware that the bun was well established long before today's association with Easter as we observe it.

The Egyptians offered a similar bun to a moon goddess and the Greeks marked their version with a cross, not symbolising the crucifixion, but marking the four quarters of the moon.

Like the bun's origins, it's difficult to find the true beginnings of Easter.

St Bede wrote in his work, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, which was completed about 730AD, that it possibly refers to a goddess known as Eostre.

Scholars who understand such matters also suggest it was more likely to do with the celebration of the spring equinox known as Ostara and the worship of another pagan identity. Interestingly, long before Christ, Easter traditionally appears to have followed the theme of celebrating the resurrection of life (spring) over death (winter).

Relating a specific Friday to Christ's execution still causes uncertainty among scholars, with arguments that it was possibly Wednesday or Thursday. However, it does seem likely that the event actually happened around the time of the Ostara celebration.

As for the bun, well it's really back to its original pagan roots and now appears to be mass-produced purely to pay homage to today's god of choice, Mammon.