Happy April!

Happy April to all my friends and readers

New Calendar picture with this
beautiful watercolour painting by Frank Koebsch

"Auf der Suche nach dem Osterhasen"
"Looking for the Easter Bunny"

 Isn't this just the cutest picture of a little girl with her bunnies?
I've had this calendar with pictures by Hanka and Frank Koebsch for a long time now but they always surprise me again.

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The official name in Low German is "Ostermaond". "Ostern" is the German word for Easter and they both have the same linguistic root. They might come from the old Germanic Austrō for dawn after which they probably named a Germanic spring festival and it then developed in Old English into Ēostra, then Ēostre and Ēastre and in in Old High German to ōst(a)ra, plural ōstarun.

But no matter where the word comes from, in Germany all kids are looking forward to Easter because the Easter bunny comes and brings eggs and chocolates. While this sounds funny if you think about it, both the bunny and the eggs represent spring when many of the animals have their offspring.

So, in the morning of Easter Sunday, all the children are looking for Easter nests, filled with brightly painted chicken eggs and sweets (often in form of the bunny, chicks and eggs) hidden by the "Easter Bunny".
We also decorate branches of forsythia, catkins, corkscrew hazel, birch, and cherry branches are used with blown out and brightly painted eggs.

And we have Easter pastry, usually in the shape of a lamb or a rabbit. For lunch, there is often lamb or sometimes rabbit though I don't care for either of them.

Since Easter is mainly a religious holiday, people attend mass either at midnight or in the morning. There, the Easter candle is lit. This is a large candle but people are invited to take a small one back home.

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But, of course, April is also the first full month of spring (in the Northern Hemisphere where we start spring on 21 March). There is a lot of superstition about all kinds of weather but in spring, you hear a lot of it. Like the cuckoo. You hear his first calls at around the end of March/beginning of April. It is said that if you put your hands in your pocket when you hear the cuckoo for the first time in the year and you will have as much money as you have with you all year round. So, people would never walk around without money at this time of the year. Also, you can ask the cuckoo how long you still shall live and when you count his calls, those are the amount of years you are still among us.

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And, as always, this month starts with April Fools' Day. I'm not going to write much about this since that is known all over the world. Every country has a different explanation as to when and why it started (of course, always in THEIR country, LOL). All I know is that it has been around in Germany since 1618. Apparently, together with Friday the 13th, it has been an unlucky day for ages. However, nobody knows why. 

Once we told someone a story and they believed it, we shout "April! April!" and they know they've been fooled.

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Weather lore (or farmers' rule) for April: April, April does what he wants. (April, April, macht was er will.) We call any time when the weather changes abruptly "April weather".

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Have a happy April with this beautiful watercolour painting by Frank Koebsch. Have a Happy Easter! And, most important of all: Stay safe and healthy!


You can find many more wonderful pictures on their website here.

You can also have a look under my labels Artist: Frank Koebsch and Artist: Hanka Koebsch where you can find all my posts about them.