Children all over France wake up Easter morning, excited to find chocolate Easter eggs and candy hidden throughout the house or the yard. Except unlike American Easter legend, the Easter bunny isn’t responsible for these presents – the eggs were brought by the Easter bells! (We call them “Les cloches de Pâques”).

According the tradition, all of the church bells in France fly to the Vatican three days before the Easter holiday. No bells ring in France from the Thursday before Easter when they depart for Italy until Easter Sunday, when they arrive back in France – with all of the Easter eggs and gifts they’ve picked up on their travels. By the time they ring again on Easter morning, all of the children know the bells are back in town and bearing gifts!

This is why if you are in France over Easter the windows of patisseries are filled with beautiful chocolate bells intricately designed and decorated, in honor of the Easter trip the bells take every year.

À bientôt!

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 5:41 pm and is filed under French Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.