The Easter egg is an Easter symbol that remains popular throughout American popular culture as a representation of both creation and resurrection, of spring fertility and of the miracle of birth. In Christian terms, the egg is viewed symbolically as the tomb from which Christ broke forth, giving new life to the world. Traditionally, the egg, both plain and decorated, has been associated with the myth of creation and with a hope for abundance.
In Western culture, the egg has become an important part of the celebrations of Easter and a symbol of the renewal of life in spring. Ancient Egyptians and Persians believed that the earth was hatched from a cosmic egg. From this tradition came the belief that eggs laid during the Easter season, particularly on Holy Thursday or Good Friday, were supposed to stay fresh. In the ancient world, friends exchanged decorated eggs at the spring equinox, the beginning of their new year. Christians of the Near East adopted this tradition and the egg became a religious symbol, as it represented the tomb from which Jesus came forth. Because eggs were at one time forbidden by the Catholic Church during Lent, they became a valuable Easter food due to their scarcity.
Easter eggs in a basket, colored and painted. Ancient symbols of both fertility and resurrection, eggs were often associated with the spring equinox in the Near East, and early Christians adopted the custom of exchanging them as gifts. The decoration of Easter eggs was especially popular in Eastern Europe, where eggs had been significant to pagan Slavic mythology. Easter egg hunts remain amongst the most popular rites of spring in the United States. (Spalato81/Dreamstime.com)
In Eastern Europe, Christian associations with the egg were integrated with pagan beliefs, which connected the egg with sun worship, the renewal of life in spring, and with rituals to maintain or restore health. In this way, the rich traditions surrounding eggs have remained strong.
The egg as a form of currency dates to late medieval Europe when people paid their clergyman (and often their landlords) in eggs and made egg donations to their local churches. These “egg tithes” came due at Easter. These customs can be traced back to late thirteenth-century England, but they also existed in the Netherlands, Estonia, and Germany.
There have been many legends detailing the origins of the Easter egg. One Polish tale claims that the Virgin Mary created the first decorated eggs as toys for the baby Jesus by dyeing a batch of eggs in various colors. Another Polish story credits Mary Magdalene with the invention of Easter eggs, as on the morning of the Resurrection she supposedly took a basket of boiled eggs, her food for the day, to Jesus’s tomb. When she discovered the entry to the tomb rolled away, the eggs suddenly became very bright.
The Ukrainians have the most imaginative Easter egg legends. One tale credits Simon of Cyrene, an egg peddler and the man who helped carry Jesus’s cross, with the custom of coloring eggs, as his eggs took on bright, cheerful hues. Another Ukrainian legend states that when Jesus was on the cross, each drop of his blood that hit the ground became a red egg.
A Romanian legend tells how Christ invented red Easter eggs in a story that is similar to the Ukrainian tale of Jesus’s blood turning to red eggs, except this tale states that the Virgin Mary brought a basket of eggs to the Crucifixion site to influence the soldiers to spare her son. As Mary began to cry, blood dropped from Jesus’s wounds, splashing the eggs. Mary decided that, in memory of this moment, all Easter eggs must be dyed red in whole or in part. The Blessed Virgin carried out this command, presenting those she encountered with a red egg and the greeting, “Christ is risen!”
Along with the legends, many superstitions developed over Easter eggs. Folklore from many regions in Europe gave these eggs mysterious powers. As a result, the eggs, or their shells, developed magical charms. There was also the superstition that Easter eggs had the power to increase productivity and fertility in both animals and humans.
The earliest historical records concerning decorated Easter eggs indicate that they were given as gifts. In 1290, King Edward I presented more than 400 boiled eggs covered with gold leaf to members of his household on Easter Sunday. Historical documents also reveal that Easter eggs were known in Poland, Germany, and in Russia, where the czar and members of the nobility exchanged eggs at Easter. Most famous were the jewel-encrusted Fabergé eggs that czars Alexander III and his son, Nicholas II, commissioned for their wives from jeweler Karl Fabergé between 1885 and 1917.
In the contemporary United States, Easter egg hunts are held for children in front and backyards, and in other outdoor public spaces. Easter egg hunts are modern versions of egg games played on Easter for centuries in European countries. Perhaps the best-known Easter egg hunt in the United States is the Easter Egg Roll held on the White House lawn in Washington, D.C. on the Monday after Easter.
Ethnicity at Easter finds expression through egg decorating. Among certain ethnic groups, the eggs, with their contents removed, are painted with elaborate designs. Among the Slavic people, these are called pisanki (“to design”); they represent renewal and resurrection. Pisanki eggs are created by drawing on an egg shell covered with a layer of wax; then the egg is submerged into a dye, with purple or brown onion skins often fixing the egg’s design. Many eggs are still decorated in this traditional way.
Eggs provide a symbolic main course for the Easter meal. The custom of giving dyed and decorated eggs remains a popular social and religious tradition in many Catholic communities, where families often begin decorating dozens of eggs at the start of Lent to meet the demand for the number of eggs required for family members, friends, and relatives at Easter, and to use in their church services on Easter Sunday. For Orthodox Greeks, their Easter service ends with the exchange of crimson-dyed eggs that have been blessed by the priest.
Martin J. Manning
See also Easter Bunny; European Sources; Superstitions
Further Reading
Brunvand, Jan H., ed. 1996. American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. New York: Garland.
Dues, Greg. 2000. Catholic Customs and Traditions: A Popular Guide. Rev. ed. Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third.
Egg Art. 1982. Washington, DC: American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. http://www.loc.gov/folklife/EggArt/EggArt.pdf.
Gulevich, Tanya. 2002. Encyclopedia of Easter, Carnival, and Lent. Detroit, MI: Omnigraphics.
Newall, Venetia. 1971. An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Easter Eggs—Primary Document
Clarissa Downs, “Lottie Champney’s Easter Party” (1890)
The following selection comes from an article in a widely read American magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book. This periodical did much to create a common culture among an ethnically diverse population, at least for literate, middle-class families. The editor, Sarah Hale, campaigned in its pages for a national holiday of Thanksgiving, and the magazine is credited with helping to spread the tradition of the family Christmas tree. In this story, readers learn about the tradition of Easter eggs through Cousin Helen’s answer to Lottie’s question and the Easter egg hunt at Helen’s Easter Monday party.
“Now tell me why we always have eggs at Easter?”
“That we may attribute to a custom. They used to be called Pace, Pasch-eggs, and only the pleasure they grant you children seems to be their excuse for being a prominent feature of the celebration. Yet the Persians celebrated an egg festival at this time, and the custom seems to be time-honored. Then, too, the egg is emblematic of revivified nature. A beautiful little downy thing with wings bursts forth from the egg, if it is permitted to follow its natural course, showing how, in the least of things, nature and God meet to rejoice in life.”
“I should think we would have pink, blue and striped chickens, if we hatched Easter eggs,” broke in Larry, Lottie’s brother, a lad of eight, who had listened to Helen’s last statement open-mouthed.
“Wait and see what chickens will be hatched for you two little chatter-boxes,” laughed Cousin Helen.
“Oh, tell us, tell us what is going to happen,” cried Lottie, while Larry looked beseeching.
“No, you must wait until Easter Monday. Now, don’t tease me, for I won’t tell you any more.”
So the children must fain content themselves, but Lottie went about, talking of the Easter mystery until someone told her not “to count her chickens before they were hatched,” whereupon Larry replied, with great indignation, that Cousin Helen had promised them a pink chicken with green wings, and she always kept her promises.
Easter day passed, with its beautiful solemnities, and Lottie thought no angel could have looked or sung more sweetly than Cousin Helen, as she stood in her place in the choir.
Monday morning, Lottie and Larry were sent on a visit to a small cousin, and only got home at two o’clock, in time to don their best raiment, as Cousin Helen said she expected a few young friends in to an Easter party.
They began coming, presently, until the parlors held about ten shy little boys and girls, nearly all overwhelmed with the importance of stiff collars or cologne handkerchiefs; and one small damsel had on kid gloves! an honor that led to much curiosity and attention from the others.
Among them came Cousin Helen, lovely in her white gown, and the sunshine finding rest in her bright hair.
“Children,” she said, joyously, “I’ve asked you all to an Easter party. Now I’ll tell you how it begins. In this room are hidden ten eggs. With every egg is something the Eastertide has also brought you. You are to hunt and find for yourselves the Pasch-eggs of our Easter joy.”
In a moment all understood her, and such a merry scene ensued. They searched the walls, curtains, vases, and from all sorts of impossible corners came the brilliant many-colored eggs, and with each egg a small package. Now it was a perfume sachet, delicately painted, or a dainty handkerchief. One little girl had a fine whistle, while a lad of ten held up a doll’s lace pinafore. A transfer was promptly made and both rejoiced in the change. Small bottles of cologne, little Chinese bonbonnières filled with candy, books, and small purses. Each child found a gift, and cries of delight, eager thanks, glad smiles, brought the rich color to Helen’s face. Then, without pause of time to examine their treasures, the panting, excited little group of children were conducted into the next room, and a hush fell upon them as Aunt Marie recited for them a beautiful Easter story of sorrow and gladness.
After this came a simple, substantial supper, the little damsel with the kid gloves being the only one to demur, and Lottie felt ashamed for her when she overheard her whisper to her companion that it was “a shabby party—no ice-cream or punch.”
There was delicious milk, however, and delicate rolls, and dainty meringues and cake, and candy, and, more than all else to most of the children, was the bouquet of lovely flowers given each, as they left the room, by Miss Helen’s own hand.
There were a few games after this, and then the hour for departure sent home ten happy children, with full hands and not so full a stomach that they failed to eat their hearty dinner at six o’clock with their parents.
“But, cousin Helen,” said Larry, thoughtfully, as he bit a piece off his red candy rooster that his Easter egg had brought him, “he is here but he isn’t pink and hasn’t any green wings, and my egg is sky-blue.”
“We did the best we could, Larry, but couldn’t find one the right color. However, wasn’t the egg productive of some other desire?”
“It’s a four blader, and beats Jem Stuart’s all to pieces,” responded Larry, proudly poising a penknife on his palm.
“And oh! Cousin Helen, I am so pleased with my bonbonnière, and I think—let me whisper what I think, for Larry will not understand.” So Helen bent her bright head and Lottie said:
“I think you should be Ostera; you are our morning light, and I love you, oh! how I love you.”
And then Lottie wondered a little why Cousin Helen’s eyes grew full of tears. She knew she was not sorry, but Lottie had yet to learn that the love of those whom we love is often something so sweet that it exchanges symbols with sorrow.
“Thank you, dear Lottie,” was all Cousin Helen said.
Source: Downs, Clarissa. “Lottie Champney’s Easter Party.” Godey’s Lady’s Book (1890) 120: 331–332.