Easter Eggs: Decorating, Hunts and Bunnies

Easter Eggs are an important part of the Easter tradition. Learn about their history, and about Easter Eggs around the world.

Easter Eggs

The association of eggs with the Easter Bunny is actually a recent one. It seems to be the result of an ad campaign (believe it or not) by European candy makers who wanted to advertise their product. The egg, long a symbol of fertility, had long been a traditional staple of Easter celebrations. The pairing of the Easter Egg and the Easter Bunny at the end of the nineteenth century was not only a stroke of marketing genius, but also well-founded in the traditions of the past.

Decorating Easter Eggs

While no one can say when the practice of giving eggs actually became associated with Easter, the decorating of eggs is as diverse as the cultures that engage in the practice. It is known that the eggs were painted with bright colors to celebrate spring and were used in Easter egg-rolling contests and given as gifts, a practice that predated the advent of Christianity. Medieval records note that eggs were often given as Easter gifts to servants by their masters. What is known is that the egg, like the rabbit, was a symbol of renewal of life and therefore a logical symbol for the celebration of Easter.

The methods of decoration are as varied as the peoples who practice it. Some of the most elaborate are the Ukrainian Pysanki eggs. These ornate objects are truly works of art. First, melted beeswax is applied to the white, unblemished shell using a brass cone mounted on a stick; this tool is known as a Kistka. Then, the egg is dipped into the first of a series of dyes; this process is repeated numerous times. The wax is then melted off the egg to reveal the ovoid masterpiece.

Easter Eggs Around the World

The Greeks dye their Easter Eggs red to symbolize and honor the blood of Christ, while those in Germany and Austria, traditionally give green eggs on Maundy (or Holy) Thursday—the day commemorating Christ's Last Supper. In Slavic countries, decorating eggs in special patterns of gold and silver adds luster to the shell and to the sharing. The Armenian tradition is to decorate hollowed out eggshells with religious images significant to the holiday. The Easter Egg hunt itself has also taken many cultural twists and turns. In America, of course, the colored Easter Eggs are hidden and then children search for them. In the northern counties of England, children act out the "Pace Egg Play" and beg for eggs and other presents; the term Pace itself is a derivative of the ancient Hebrew verb posach (to pass over), which has evolved into the better known word and holiday title Pesach, or Passover.

Pennsylvania Dutch children believed that if they were good, the Oschter Haws would lay a nest of brightly colored eggs. And, in a far-removed invocation of the egg's primal symbol—fertility—Polish girls used to send eggs to their beloveds as a token of their feelings. Even more interesting is the fact that a roasted egg can take the place of a lamb shank (which mirrored the traditional sacrificial lamb) on the Seder plate at a Jewish Passover celebration.

The egg, like the Rabbit, has become fused into the spring festival of Easter throughout the world. Whether colored, hollowed or made of candy, the source of a child's delight or a symbol of faith, this image of newlife and renewal certainly has made its own nest in the human cultural psyche.