Who celebrates Easter watching a whodunnit?

MILLIONS of us will go on an Easter egg hunt or tuck into hot cross buns tomorrow.
But other countries have very different Easter Weekend traditions — and not all are related to Christianity.

In NORWAY, families gather round the television to watch an Agatha Christie movie or TV whodunnit. It follows an ancient tradition of acting out a murder mystery play over Easter.

Great British tradition ... Easter traffic

On Easter Monday in the CZECH REPUBLIC, young males make whips from willow branches and tour the streets looking for young women and girls to smack on the legs.
The women later get their revenge by pouring buckets of cold water over the men.
In POLAND, parents creep into their children’s bedrooms on Good Friday morning and wake them by tapping them with switches made of twigs while reciting “the wounds of God” from an Easter prayer.

SPANISH adults and children dress up in the kinds of costumes favoured in the US by the Ku Klux Klan — but there is nothing racist about this celebration.
In the PHILIPPINES, every Good Friday dozens of men re-enact Christ’s crucifixion by having themselves nailed to wooden crosses.

ROMANIANS sweep the house, have a ritual bath and put on new clothes before going to church on Easter Sunday, and in BERMUDA people fly kites to celebrate Jesus rising from the tomb. Families in BULGARIA throw eggs at each other, with the oldest women smearing the first broken egg over the face of the youngest children.
On Easter Monday, the EGYPTIANS eat fish that has been buried underground, in a tradition that can be traced back to 2700BC.

FINNS, SWEDES and DANES hold Halloween celebrations at Easter. And in IRELAND people eat simnel cake topped with 11 balls of marzipan in honour of Jesus’s faithful Apostles.
But perhaps the strangest Easter fact of all is that Christians cannot agree when the festival falls.
This year Catholics and Protestants celebrate Easter Sunday tomorrow while most Orthodox Christians will wait until next Sunday.