Many of the traditions we associate with Easter can be traced back to celebrations that honored Ostara, or Eastre (Old English), an ancient pagan Germanic goddess of spring.  Associated with the radiant dawn and the reawakening of nature, she represented the renewal of life, joys, and blessings.  Such imagery could easily be incorporated into the Christian festival of Christ’s resurrection and the dawning of eternal light and promise.

There were pagan customs that the Christian church reformulated to fit into its rituals, and others that it tolerated.  Among the latter were the so-called Easter games that included the symbolic egg. It was viewed as a mysterious capsule that hid a developing being only to be brought forth when the shell broke.  Eggs were decorated and offered up in the great spring festivals of yore.  The hare also was part of pagan ritual:  As one of the most fecund animals known, it became a symbol of fertility. 

Georg Franck von Frankenau first wrote about the Alsatian tradition of a Hare bringing Easter eggs in his De ovis paschalibus or About Easter Eggs in 1682, but it was the Pennsylvania Dutch who brought the tradition of the Easter Hare or Oschter Haws to Pennsylvania.  Children believed that if they were good,  an Easter hare would lay eggs in the grass for them.

o osterhaas, o osterhaas,          O Easter hare, O Easter hare,
leg dyni eier bald ins gras!         quickly lay your eggs in the grass!¹

Little boys made nests out of their hats, and little girls from their bonnets, which they then put outside in the grass on Easter Eve for the Oschter Haws  to lay his eggs for them.  The eggs they found the next day may have been a dark rusty brown from the onion skins their mothers had used to dye them the preceding Maundy Thursday, but no matter.  A child’s imagination is a place where colors are mixed the hue of the heart. 

Tags: Pennsylvania German Collection, Rare Book Department

"Be afraid... Be very afraid." is the newest addition to the ever-expanding collection of interactive online exhibitions featured on the Free Library's website.

The exhibition, researched and written by Cameron Dahl, a Librarian 2 in the Literature Department, and Aurora Deshauteurs, Curator of the Print and Picture Collection, spans centuries of historic and harrowing horror tales that can be found in the Free Library's circulating collections, ghastly images from our Print and Picture Collection, terrifying trailers for some of the most frightening films ever made and links to esoteric essays from fellow horror hounds on the web.

Some highlights include the nightmarish world of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, often cited as the first horror film), the definitive literary horror classic, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), the birth of the modern zombie movie with Night of The Living Dead (1968), the low-budget shock of Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), the quintessential "slasher" film Halloween (1978), the body horror and media macabre of David Cronenberg's Videodrome (1983), the self-referential satire Scream (1996), and the "found footage" genre of scare tactics in Paranormal Activity (2007).

Immerse yourself in this interactive exhibition, borrow horror books and movies from our chilling collection, and share the scares on social media.

View this exhibition... if you dare!


 

Tags: Exhibitions, digital collections, tech, website

Some sad news came across the internet last week as Google posted on their official blog that as of July 1st, 2013 they would be shutting down their Google Reader service. Google Reader is--or rather was--one of the easiest to use and best RSS web-based readers out there, so there was definitely a certain amount of shock and confusion that has spread through the internet since Google's announcement.

There are of course other RSS reader options out there, the Lifehacker website has a good rundown of a number of current readers that may be good candidates to transition to from Google Reader.

In the meantime, you can retain your Google Reader data, including all of your RSS subscriptions, by downloading it through Google Takeout. You can then import that data into a new RSS reader.

The Free Library currently lists Google Reader as an RSS reader option on our website to access our RSS news feeds, such as our Author Events, Podcasts, Book Reviews, Digital Collections, and this blog. We'll be testing out some of the Google Reader replacement options currently available and make a blog announcement with recommendations before Google Reader shuts down in July.

Google Reader 2005 - 2013 R.I.P.  : (

Tags: Community Events, Events at the Library, mobile, podcasts, tech, website