Feather-crazy, bedazzled twigs: The true story behind the Easter Feathers

In the United States, where I’m from, Easter is a pretty child-safe holiday.

You eat chocolate, you paint some eggs, your clothing suddenly becomes pastel, floral napkins mysteriously show up on your table… nothing that would be out of place in your average daycare. The whole thing is quite tame for a holiday based on commemorating the brutal crucifixion of a religious leader 2000-some years ago.

My kind of Easter decorations: slightly saccharine, totally innocuous baby chickens! Photo: Kate Reuterswärd

In Sweden, Easter is similarly tame on the surface. Dig a little deeper, though, and you’ll find some pretty scary stuff.

For example, witches. That’s right, witches. What, you don’t remember them figuring into the Gospel? That’s weird. Because in Sweden, little children dressed up as “Easter witches” are part of the celebrations.

Come on. Of course you knew that Maundy Thursday (aka Holy Thursday) is the designated day of the year for all the witches to fly to Blåkulla to have a wild orgy with the devil.

A wild orgy?? You’re shocked? But what else would they be doing there?!! (You can read more about it at “Blåkulla, Easter witches, and other true stories of an obviously Christian holiday”.)

Here’s another strange, seemingly-innocuous tradition: these ridiculous feather-crazy, bedazzled twigs.

Don’t get me wrong; the branches themselves are beautiful, especially once they start blooming a little. The feathers are the part I find strange.

With the feathers attached, these beautiful branches look like the arts and crafts projects I did when I was 5 and had not yet learned that “less is more.” It looks like someone tortured a poor chicken by painting its feathers all different artificial colors and then it exploded right next to a bunch of branches that were inexplicably covered in glue. I mean, really.

Some Easter Feathers outside a store in Lund. Photo: Kate Reuterswärd

In fact, I had several theories about why the Easter feathers might be part of the typical décor.

Theory One:

The branches are in memoriam of The Great Easter Chicken, a vicious and gigantic hen that roamed Sweden in the 1600s, pecking villagers to death and destroying villages with its mighty talons. Different accounts put The Great Easter Chicken at the size of an elk, a brown bear, or a mastodon. The Great Easter Chicken was, without a doubt, the largest and most fearsome predator around. Its reign of terror was, at that time, unrivaled in all of Scandinavia.

Unrivaled until one fateful day, that is, when Lasse the Swede vanquished The Great Easter Chicken in a mighty battle, much like that between Grendel’s mother and Beowulf (albeit slightly less poetic). Lasse emerged victorious, although not unscathed (it was only a flesh wound).

From then on, he needed the assistance of a birch staff to walk, which he decorated with The Great Chicken’s feathers as a sign of his accomplishment.

Theory Two:

The Easter Feathers were developed during the high courtly period of Sweden. During the Spring, aristocratic ladies found themselves affected by a certain spring fever and needed an indirect way to communicate their intentions to certain aristocratic counterparts.

The Easter Feathers are a carryover from the feathered fans which these aristocratic ladies carried in the spring as an essential tool in their courting rituals. They could signal their intentions through the feathers as well as demurely hide behind the twigs if need be. In recent years, Swedish society has become slightly less demure, so Easter Feathers became a household ornament rather than part of the complex aristocratic mating dance.

A way to ward off an extremely vengeful Buni? Photo: Kate Reuterswärd

Theory Three:

The Easter Feathers herald back to the pagan period of Sweden, when Norse gods and goddesses were still revered. Buni, the god of rabbits, became extremely annoyed when he realized that his earthly minions (i.e. rabbits) were being eaten almost exclusively at spring time dinners. In retaliation, he punished the Swedes with seven years of wind, hail, and driving rain, a misery that was broken only by the customary 6 months of winter per year.

Finally, the Swedes were able to appease Buni by switching their dinner fare to chicken, a change they notified the god of by sacrificing large amounts of chicken to him (murder most fowl) and decorating their homes with the feathers plucked from the sacrificial bodies.

In order to continue to appease Buni (and in a vain attempt to ward off his ruthless weather onslaught), Swedes still decorate their homes with twigs and feathers, sending the message upward to Buni that we’re still not eating rabbit!

The truth:

Unfortunately, the truth about the Easter Feathers (or Påskris) is not nearly as exciting as any of my theories had led me to believe. Thanks to a reader, I found the Wikipedia website on Påskris in Swedish, and if you can believe it, the true story was actually kind of boring.

Come on, Sweden! I expected pagan rites and witches and bloodshed and at least some fire!

Photos: Kate Reuterswärd

So here it is: The bedazzled twigs represent the palm leaves that were placed on the ground for Jesus’ donkey to walk on in his triumphant return to Jerusalem. (If this story is foreign to you, you can get all the details by Googling “Palm Sunday”.) As you may have guessed, palm trees are not native to Sweden, so this was the best they could do to imitate their more equatorial neighbors.

We’ll leave aside the fact that these Easter Feathers look nothing like palm leaves (you get an “A” for effort, guys). Apparently, part of the tradition was also that the father of the family would whip his children/wife with the twigs—lovingly, one supposes, and not violently—in remembrance of Jesus’ suffering.

This tradition started in the 1600s and ended in the 1700s, more or less, when the fun of whipping one’s children was transferred to another holiday, celebrated later in the year. The Easter Feathers didn’t become a common household decoration until the 1900s, however.

That’s it! The true story behind the bedazzled Easter Feathers. What do you think? (Personally, I’m planning on sticking with The Great Easter Chicken story and spread it to anyone who will believe me.)

Happy Easter to everyone out there—I’ll be celebrating on the wrong day again with all the Swedes (they celebrate “Easter Eve,” which is still unfathomable to me) and enjoying my long weekend off from work!