2010Easter - Set

This year Magyar Posta is once again issuing a new ordinary postage stamp to send Easter greetings. Many folk customs, traditions and symbols are associated with one of Christianity’s most important festivals. Decorated and red eggs, catkins, the lamb and the bunny are typical and well-known symbols of this feast, and some of them appear on the new Easter stamp for 2010. Opinions differ over the origin of the Easter bunny. Some researchers believe that the ancient connection between the bunny and eggs stems from the legend of the goddess of the underworld in German mythology, in which the bunny was originally a bird and the goddess turned it into a four-legged animal in her rage. However, it may be that the connection is based on a misunderstanding as in some German-speaking areas guineafowl with eggs used to be given as presents. The German name for guineafowl is Haselhuhn or Hasel for short. The misunderstanding might have been caused by the German word for bunny, which is Hase. Other sources believe that the bunny and the egg became part of the Christian festivities in the German lands in the 16th century, where the first nest in a basket was made, and later the first confectionary bunny. According to this theory, making a nest can probably be traced back to the fact that the bunny depicted in Western culture belongs to the Lepus genus, that is the hare, which does not dig a burrow but makes a simple nest. Its young are born with their eyes open, and they have bigger bodies and longer ears. In Hungary there is a village called Nyúl (meaning bunny in Hungarian), and this gives locals a special reason to celebrate Easter with a series of events lasting two days. The main subjects of the stamp design are red Easter eggs and the bunny, set in a rich composition with bright spring colours. The graphic elements of the stamp design are repeated on the first day cover. The design of the special postmark is a stylised drawing of decorated eggs.