Easter lamb

[purpleheartsandroses]

Why is lamb the go to meat for Easter?

Let's celebrate the new life of spring....by eating it???

I love lamb, it's my favourite meat. But wouldn't mutton be more appropriate? Or chicken so we can celebrate the new life hatching from the eggs?

AIBU to think we should be eating the "old" meat, so we can celebrate the arrival of new life?

Sadly I can't claim credit for it. But yes - bring back the laughter emoji!

Jesus lamb of God as someone else said. He’s literally represented as a lamb with a resurrection flag. And the resurrection flag is also where we get the St George’s cross.

Chickens live to be 3 (hybrids) to 8 years (old mixed use breeds) typically.

A commercial roast chicken is killed at about 8 weeks old. They aren't adult, they've just been bred to pile on weight and are slaughtered when they reach a saleable weight.

A lamb is more like 8 months old.

We eat lamb at Easter because Jesus was the Lamb Of God and was sacrificed. (Christianity has some weird cannibalistic rituals, like the wine and wafer actually becoming the blood and flesh of Jesus, when you think about it. "Let's celebrate this divine being by eating his metaphorical animal.")

It isn't in season in the Northern hemisphere.

There will be British lamb for sale at Easter. Some farmers hve the lambing early or late.

The lamb of god?

The whole shepherd god lamb jesus thing always felt odd to me. Shepherds may guard their flock from wolves, but the sheep do still go off to slaughter!

Because lamb was the meat eaten at the Passover. And later went on to symbolise the Lamb of God.

As Jesus did. He was the sacrificial lamb.

My bible knowledge is sketchy these days, but didn't God basically blackmail him into it? Created him solely for the purpose of letting humanity kill him?

Then again, it's been a long time since I went to Sunday school.

Most people just don’t realise that the lamb their eating was probably culled last autumn. Living next to a field of sheep I do. If it was lamb grown this spring so far it would be minuscule compared to the 3 kilo lump I have to cook tomorrow. And yes, I don’t get our lamb very often as it fetches too high a price as organic and grass fed, tomorrow’s coming from Sainsbury’s.

There is British lamb for sale. We shouldn't be importing inferior rubbish from New Zealand at any time of the year.

How do they keep it fresh for 6 months before selling? Or is it frozen? Does that mean I shouldn't be freezing the multiple legs I bought yesterday?

I grew up in London so am admittedly ignorant of the actual logistics of animal -> table process.

God was pretty cruel most of the way through the Bible. People seem to gloss over that.

@purpleheartsandroses , lambs are killed when they are 6 months to 12 months old. A lamb born in May might get slaughtered in time for Easter.
Some sheep lamb early and they could be fattened for Easter.

Reading through the responses, I'm going to change my stance a bit.

Lamb for Jews for passover/secular Easter - makes perfect sense.
Lamb for Christians for religious Easter - Seems a bit of a stretch, but fair enough.
Lamb for secular/pagen Easter - still seems odd to me. Although probably more to do with lamb being called lamb rather than the actual age of slaughter. (From the French, I know).

Jesus is God. He sacrificed himself.

I've bought mutton from a woman who has a stall on our monthly Sunday market. Also hogget. Both delicious.

However, we will be having lamb. Yes it probably is from New Zealand.

Lamb from the uk is not in season this early in the year. Lambing has been going for a month or so at most. They enter the food chain at 40-44kg so nowhere near now.

Mine were born in November this year in France which is fairly random (the ram went in with them in June) and we had last years lamb from the freezer today. we weighed some a couple of weeks ago and the heaviest was 50kg but ours don’t go into the commercial for chain.

Lambs aren’t choosing death…tell me you’ve never raised sheep without telling me you’ve never raised sheep.

Lamb / sheep is the meat of the Middle East. Since we don’t do
mutton in the uk anymore, lamb it is.

I’m sure in 100 years it will be a nice block of something grown in a warehouse called “nearly lamb”.

You do realise lamb is traditional?
Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household....12:5Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats.12:6You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight.12:7They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.12:8They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs....12:11This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the LORD.12:12I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD.12:13The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.12:14"This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.

Do you not have Google, OP?

I mean, you're on the internet anyway and this is a pretty easy question to answer accurately without asking a whole bunch of strangers who may or may not have any idea.

So what you're actually complaining about is that a lot of people have different beliefs from you and they're eating lamb and you don't want them to.

Have a word with yourself.

We quite often had a spinach and egg savoury pie thing for Easter growing up (torta pasqualina...with 33 layers of pastry for the number of years Jesus lived).

It was very tasty but sadly a bit beyond my cooking skills.

I hate lamb…it tastes like the smell of farm 🤣🤣

Virtually nobody celebrates a pagan Easter. Nobody I know is "celebrating new life" in a pagan way, it's all leftovers from the Christian celebrations, which others point out might borrow from Passover traditions. At a push it's a celebration of Spring, and I do think of lamb as "spring lamb".