Spring is ushered in across the world with a host of strange and wonderful religious, secular and pagan traditions, many of which make our egg-laying bunny seem rather mundane. In Norway, for instance, no Easter is complete without an old-fashioned murder mystery. Yet all these odd traditions are rooted in the universal experience of spring as a time of natural and spiritual renewal.

Nils Nordberg has been producing murder mystery serials for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation since 1984. He says this tradition of Easter mysteries can be traced back to the surprise success of the railway-heist thriller Raid on the Bergen Express, which was published at Easter, 1923.

Since then Norwegians have taken light fiction, especially murder mysteries, on their Easter skiing holidays. The Easter trend for solving murders has now extended into living rooms, with families congregating around nightly detective dramas like Agatha Christie’s Poirot and Anthony Horowitz’s Foyle’s War.

Nordberg sees a clear link between Easter and death: “Easter is based on the trial and execution of Jesus, and of course in pagan times they used to sacrifice animals and even people. Easter is a bloody time.” The Czechs prefer their Easter violence to be less lethal. Czech boys celebrate Easter Monday by whipping girls around the legs with braided whips called pomlázkas.

Traditionally the whipping, which is supposed to bestow health and youth for the rest of the year, is accompanied by a nursery rhyme asking for eggs. Nowadays the reward is more likely to be chocolate, or a shot of plum brandy for older boys.

Jan Mlák, the director of Czech Tourism, London, says: “It’s a kind of barometer of how popular a girl is. It’s not about the whipping, but about the number of visits she receives from boys.”

Another folk tradition popular with Slovakian men, called oblievacka, involves throwing buckets of cold water over women on Easter Monday. It’s said to make the women feel fresh and healthy for the rest of the year – at the risk of a nasty cold.

Of all of the secular Easter symbols the egg is probably the most pervasive. We hunt them, paint them and there was a time when we duelled with them. The European tradition of egg tapping, or knocking, as it’s known in America, is enjoying a revival in Louisiana.

Marksville claims to host the oldest egg-knocking competition in the US, dating back to the 1950s. Competitors pair up on the steps of the courthouse on Easter Sunday and knock the tips of two eggs together. If the shell of your egg cracks you have to forfeit it, a process that continues until just one egg remains.

Marksvillians take their knocking seriously, with competitors searching for the hardest eggs a year in advance. They tap the shell against their front teeth and listen for a bright ping, the sound of a potential champion.

Earl R. Adams, 62, a retired postman, has been knocking eggs in Marksville since he was 12. He says his eggs have won the competition for the past six years and that his secret is breeding. “I raise my own chickens. Some lay big eggs, some lay tough little eggs. It’s about breeding out all the bad points.”

And what’s in store for the all-con-quering egg? First, it’s broken open to prove it hasn’t been tampered with, and then? Egg salad.

Easter receives more delicate treatment at the Madonna che scappa in piazza (“the Madonna who hastens in the square”) ritual in Sulmona, Italy. Here the story of the Madonna’s reunion with the resurrected Christ is infused with the symbolism of hope, love and renewal.

A crowd of thousands gathers in Piazza Garibaldi on Easter Day to watch the story reenacted by huge statues carried by members of the Confraternity of the Madonna of Loreto. Statues of Saint John and Saint Peter knock on the doors of San Filippo Neri Church, announcing Christ’s Resurrection and imploring the mourning Madonna to come out. On their third knock she emerges, covered by a black cloak.

The Madonna walks slowly into the square. Suddenly she is raised up as though on tiptoes and, seeing her resurrected son, she breaks into a run towards him, throwing off her shawl, releasing a dozen white doves and revealing a splendid green dress, a symbol of hope. She drops her handkerchief, ending her grief, and in its place there is a red rose.

Claudio Pantaleo, prior of the Confraternity of the Madonna of Loreto, hopes that the ritual of hope and rebirth will be all the more poignant for the town this year, in the wake of Monday morning’s earthquake which devastated L’Aquila, just 60km away.

He says that the parade will “absolutely still go ahead, unless the Bishop decides otherwise”.