Is named after Eastre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring.
A “salute to spring" marking re-birth tends to dignify
A festival every year at the vernal equinox, was held in her honor
It became the celebration symbolizing life's renewal and God's favor
Today on Easter Sunday, many children wake up to find that the Easter Bunny
has left them baskets of candy. He has also hidden the eggs that they decorated earlier
that week. Children hunt for the eggs all around the house. Neighborhoods and
organizations hold Easter egg hunts, and the child who finds the most eggs wins a prize.
The Easter Bunny is a rabbit-spirit. Long ago, he was called the "Easter Hare", hares
and rabbits have frequent multiple births so they became a symbol of fertility.
The custom of an Easter egg hunt began because children believed that hares laid eggs
in the grass. The Romans believed that "All life comes from an egg."
Christians consider eggs to be "the seed of life" and so they are symbolic of the resurrection
of Jesus Christ.Only within the last century were chocolate and candy eggs exchanged
as Easter gifts. But the springtime exchanging of real eggs-white, colored, and
gold-leafed-is an ancient custom, predating Easter by many centuries.
From earliest times, and in most cultures, the egg signified birth and resurrection.
The Egyptians buried eggs in their tombs. The Greeks placed eggs atop graves.
The Romans coined a proverb: Omne vivum ex ovo, "All life comes from an egg."
And legend has it that Simon of Cyrene, who helped carry Christ’s cross to Calvary, was
by trade an egg merchant. (Upon returning from the crucifixion to his produce farm,
he allegedly discovered that all his hens’ eggs had miraculously turned a rainbow of colors;
substantive evidence for this legend is weak.) Thus, when the Church started to celebrate
the Resurrection, in the second century, it did not have to search far for a popular and
easily recognizable symbol.
In those days, wealthy people would cover a gift egg with gilt or gold leaf, while peasants
often dyed their eggs. The tinting was achieved by boiling the eggs with certain flowers,
leaves, log wood chips, or the cochineal insect. Spinach leaves or anemone petals were
considered best for green; the bristly gorse blossom for yellow; logwood for rich purple;
and the body fluid of the cochineal produced scarlet.
In parts of Germany during the early 1880s, Easter eggs substituted for birth certificates.
An egg was dyed a solid color, then a design, which included the recipient’s name and
birth date, was etched into the shell with a needle or sharp tool. Such Easter eggs were
honored in law courts as evidence of identity and age.
Easter’s most valuable eggs were hand crafted in the 1880s.
Made by the great goldsmith Peter Carl Faberge, they were commissioned
by Czar Alexander III of Russia as gifts for his wife, Czarina Maria Feodorovna.
The first Faberge egg, presented in 1886, measured two and a half inches long
and had a deceptively simple exterior. Inside the white enamel shell, though,
was a golden yolk, which when opened revealed a gold hen with ruby eyes.
The hen itself could be opened, by lifting the beak, to expose a tiny diamond replica
of the imperial crown. The Faberge treasures today are collectively valued at over
four million dollars. Forty-three of the fifty-three eggs, known to have been made
by Faberge, are now in museums and private collections
Piñata’s Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things
by Charles Piñata / Paperback - 480 pages Reissue edition (September 1989) /
HarperCollins
Discover the fascinating stories behind the origins of over 500 everyday items,
expressions and customs.
The Legend of the Easter Egg
by Lori Walberg, James Bernardino / Hardcover - 32 pages (1999) / Zondervan Publishing
House
Written by the author/illustrator team of Lori Walburg and James Bernardin, this story
reveals the significance of Easter, which lies far beyond the wholesale gobbling of
chocolate eggs and jelly beans.
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