'Hot Cross Buns'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 15, 15 April 1909, Page 569

'Hot Cross Buns '

The old English Catholic custom of eating 'hot cross buns ' on Good Friday comes year by year into more conspicuous evidence even in the southern Province, whose people (being chiefly Scottish) never took kindly to this usage by their am firesides ayont the Tweed. The ' hot cross bun' (with its. brown sugary surface marked with a cross) is still composed of materials that were originally specially selected with a view to compliance with the Catholic discipline of the",.' black fa'Bt,' which is observed on Good Friday. In his Book of Bays (vol. 11., p. 418) Chambers tells low thousands of the poor in England are engaged in ' the business of disseminating these quasireligious cakes' on each recurring Good Friday, only intermitting the duty during church hours. ' And if the eagerness with which young and old eat them could be held as expressive of an appropriate sentiment within their hearts, the English might be deemed a pious people.' In these countries we do not hear the familiar street-cry that resounds throughout England on 'Good Friday morning : ' One a penny, buns ; Two a penny, buns; One a penny, two a penny; Hot cross buns!'

Instead, the cross-marked window-card cries to the passerby, in the reddest of red ink: 'Hot * buns!'