human
referring to this subject, says,
gpt
Do our Ritualists eat hot cross-buns on Good Friday? Perhaps they do not, but consider the consumption of such cakes to be a weak concession to the childish appetites of those who would not duly observe their Lenten fastings; and who, had they lived in the days of George III., would have been among the crowds who clustered beneath the wooden porticos of the two 'royal,' and rival, bun-houses at Chelsea. But there is the cross-mark on the surface of the bun to commend it to the minds which are favourably disposed to symbolism; and there is the history of the cross-bun itself, which goes back to the time of Cecrops, and to the _liba_ offered to Astarte, and to the Jewish passover cakes, and to the eucharistic bread, or cross-marked wafers, mentioned in St. Chrysostom's Liturgy, and thence adopted by the early Christians. So that the Good Friday bun has antiquity and tradition to recommend it; and, indeed, its very name of _bun_ is but the oblique _boun_, from _bous_, the sacred ox, the semblance of whose horns was stamped upon the cake. There, too, they also did duty for the horns of Astarte, in which word some philologists would affect to trace a connection with Easter. The substitution by the Greeks of the cross-mark in place of the horn-mark would seem to have chiefly been for the easier division of the round bun into four equal parts. Such cross-marked buns were found at Herculaneum.
human
eaten on Mid-Lent, or
gpt
Mothering Sunday, are, doubtless, but modern representatives of the ancient festive cake. On Simnel Sunday young persons especially visit their aged parents, and make them presents of various kinds, but chiefly of rich cakes. It is said by some to have been originally called
human
Mothering Sunday