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Barnes in Commonthe magazine of Churches Together in Barnes
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The story of the Easter Eggby Paul Holland, St Michael's Church
The history of the Easter egg is very much linked with pre-Christian times. The Saxon spring festival of Eostre was named after their goddess of the spring which involved eggs, chicks and rabbits in their fertility rites. When the Saxons converted to Christianity and started to celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ it coincided with their festival of Eostre so that is why the early church called the festival Eostre or Easter. As well as adopting the festival of Eostre for the day of the resurrection the egg representing fertility and rebirth was also adopted as part of the Christian festival and it came to represent the resurrection of Christ. Some believe that the egg is a symbol of the stone blocking the Sepulchre being "rolled" away, while others see the empty egg with its broken shell as the empty tomb and new life escaping from it. In Europe the earliest Easter eggs were painted and decorated hen, duck or goose eggs, a practice still carried on today. By the end of the 17th century manufactured eggs were available for purchase at Easter for giving as gifts. In the 18th and 19th century the eggs continued to evolve, with hollow cardboard Easter eggs filled with Easter gifts and highly decorated, culminating with the fabulous Fabergé eggs. These eggs decorated with jewels, were created for the Czars of Russia by Carl Fabergé, the famous French jeweller. In the early 1800s the first solid chocolate eggs appeared in Germany and France. These eggs were soon followed by the hollow eggs we enjoy today. Making hollow eggs in the 1800s was a difficult process, the easily worked chocolate we use was not available then and a paste was used made from ground roasted Cacao beans. The Easter egg took off in the sixties with mass production and has now become the central Easter gift which all enjoy receiving. |
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