The story goes:
The Spanish Inqusition served ham for Easter dinner in order to detect secret Jews. The theory being a Jew might profess to be Christian to avoid the Inquisition, but would still be a lurking non-believer.
On first hearing this, I got q good laugh. But maybe it’s true.
Sounds fishy. If that’s a good method to detect Jews why limit it to Easter?
My WAG is that it was intended as a thumb in the eye to Jews.
A jew wouldn’t have professed to be christian to avoid the inquisition, since inquisition had authority only on christians. Proving you were actually a Jew would have avoided any hassle with the inquisition (but not with secular authorities).They would have professed to be christian in order to stay in Spain since Jews weren’t allowed in the country.
But as soon they professed they were christians (were baptized) they fell under inquisition authority. And indeed one of the goals of this institution was to find out these “closet Jews”.
That said, I’ve no clue if it’s in any way related to a custom involving eating ham on easter. Especially since, though having been brought up as a catholic, I never heard of such a custom. So I’m wondering if I’m totally unaware of something, here, or if it couldn’t be only a local (british??) custom, hence unrelated with the historical inquisition.
**jsleek wrote:
The Spanish Inqusition served ham for Easter dinner in order to detect secret Jews. The theory being a Jew might profess to be Christian to avoid the Inquisition, but would still be a lurking non-believer.**
I’d be willing to be that, like many other holiday customs, it’s a carry-over from Pagan times.
Just as a WAG, prehaps the ham was from whichever piglets didn’t look as if it would make a good sized pig when full grown. Therefore it was slaughtered and served for dinner for the corresponding Pagan holiday of the time (Ostara, in northern Europe).
The traditional Easter meal I run across is lamb.
This seems to make sense, as Jesus is often depicted as the Lamb of God.
The use of a ham in the Easter (Spring) season may be more linked to Roman tradition.
I always thought the Easter meal should be hassenpfeffer.
One semi-WAG, and one total WAG:
Semi-WAG. A few years ago the NY Times ran a story discussing the “thumb in the eye” theory in more detail. You look at most Christian cultures and you’ll find that leavened bread forms a central part of the tradition. Hot cross buns, easter wreaths, colomba - everywhere, bread. And yet I don’t recall any discussion of bread in the NT stories of Christ’s rising - unlike the Last Supper. So the bread and pork may well have been to differentiate Christians from Jews, notwithstanding that even the word for Easter in most European languages comes from Pesach, the Hebrew for Passover (e.g. French pacques or Dutch pasen).
Total WAG. In many colder places, ham might be the only large chunk of meat you’d have on hand at Easter time, left over from slaughter in the fall and preserved to keep in through the winter.