Eggs and Easter have almost become synonymous. We all know that Easter is a Christian Holiday celebrating the rising of Christ from his grave but how the heck did eggs become the symbol of Easter?
It is the influence of the traditional spring rites that made Easter so egg-special. From earliest times, and in most cultures, the egg signified rebirth and resurrection. This is caught in old Latin proverb: Omne vivum ex ovo. This means "all life comes from an egg". The Egyptians buried eggs in their tombs. The Greeks placed eggs atop graves. Given as gifts by the ancient Greeks, Persians, and Chinese at their spring festivals, the egg also appears in pagan mythology, where we read of the Sun-Bird being hatched from the "World Egg". The ancient Saxons used eggs to celebrate the return of spring with a festival commemorating Ostara (Eostra), their goddess of Springtime. From ancient India to Polynesia, from Iran, Greece, and Phoenicia to Latvia, Estonia, and Finland, from Central America to the west coast of South America, the egg was a symbol of spring.
It naturally progressed that the egg, representing spring and fertility would be connected with Christ’s Resurrection. In the old days, eggs were wrapped with gilt or gold leaf, while peasants often dyed their eggs. The tinting of eggs 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; and log wood for rich purple and the cochineal for scarlet.
We get our Easter Egg tradition from Merrie Old England where decorating and coloring eggs for Easter was the custom during the middle ages. The household accounts of Edward I, for the year 1290, recorded an expenditure of eighteen pence for four hundred and fifty eggs to be gold-leafed and colored for Easter gifts.
We have all seen the Easter Eggs from the 21st Century. Those eggs which the family decorates one night before Easter. Mom hard-boils the eggs and the kids all sit around the table, dipping the still warm eggs into a colored liquid, usually smelling of vinegar. It was lots of fun and usually a great big mess for Mom to clean. Then the eggs are left out the night before Easter for the Easter Bunny to come and hide them so that on Sunday Morning, children worldwide could hunt for Easter Eggs!
So your challenge this week is the Easter Egg. But not an Easter Egg that children would find on Easter Morning but instead, an Easter egg, which may have adorned the household of an Englishman, back in 1290.
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| Sylvia |
Tatiana |
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