Easter Egg

What are Easter Eggs?

Easter eggs are painted or specially decorated eggs given and taken by Christians to celebrate Christ's resurrection. The egg was a symbol of a rebirth long before the Christianity. It was used by the Gentiles as a symbol of the rebirth of the earth in the Pagan celebration of spring. Early Christianity adopted the egg as a symbol of the rebirth.

Traditionally, real chicken eggs were dyed or painted. The oldest traditions used onion skins to tan eggs. The hard-cooked eggs were boiled in water with onion skins, which produced naturally tanned, brown colored Easter eggs. By attaching colored woolen yarns to the boiling eggs, different color variations and patterns were achieved.

Later on, a wide variety of food-grade dyes became available to paint Easter eggs, allowing to make eggs of any color, not just brown.

In Eastern European countries, Easter eggs represent a symbol of new life. In countries such as Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine, eggs are often beautifully painted in Slavic countries' folk traditions.

Easter Egg Traditions

Today, chicken eggs are often substituted with sweets. Chocolate eggs, or plastic eggs filled with candies or jelly beans are often used in place of real chicken eggs. Sweet eggs are widely popular with children, and are often hidden in different places throughout the house to engage children into the Easter hunt on Easter morning. Otherwise, these eggs can be put in a basket filled with straw. The baskets are usually designed to resemble a bird's nest.

Real chicken eggs are often used in egg tapping contests. Egg tapping, or egg fight, is a traditional European Easter game. Hard-boiled eggs are tapped with other participants' eggs in order to break them while keeping one's own egg undamaged. The game was called shackling, jarping or dumping in England, and known as egg-knocking in some American states.