by Imogen French

Created on: April 01, 2009   Last Updated: April 04, 2009

The coming of Easter means one thing to most children in the Western world today - chocolate eggs! Oh yes, and of course it's the time when Christians remember the death and resurrection of Jesus, and there's something to do with Easter bunnies, too...

The origins of Easter and the strange connection with eggs goes back much further than all of this, however. All over the world people of different cultures and religions celebrate the coming of spring, new birth, new growth and the beginning of a new year's harvest. The ancient Persians decorated eggs as far back as 2500 years ago to celebrate their New Year, Nowrooz, during the spring equinox. In Northern Europe the Anglo-Saxon pagans of pre-Christian times worshipped a goddess called Eostre during the month of April (known as "Eostremonath"). This was recorded by the famous Christian scholar the Venerable Bede (679-735), in his work De Temporum Ratione. Eostre was a goddess who represented life, rebirth and the coming of summer. She is thought to have been associated with the egg, an obvious symbol of rebirth and fertility, and also the hare which could perhaps have been the origin of the easter bunny!

When Christianity spread through Europe many Christian events were celebrated at the same time as the older pagan festivals, for instance Christmas coincides with the midwinter solstice, and Easter with the spring celebrations. Whether this was a blatant attempt to replace the old pagan beliefs and wipe them out for good, or simply a practical solution to avoid disrupting working days with extra holidays, who knows, but there is evidence the the church viewed paganism as devil-worship, and sought to integrate old rituals into the new faith, in order to convert people more easily. Many pagan religious sites were also taken over and became the sites of Christian churches. Gradually the name Easter replaced Eostre, and Christian beliefs superseded the pagan.

Old habits die hard, though, and many of the traditional festivities associated with this time of year have persisted. To this day people still decorate their hard boiled eggs for Easter. As a child I remember going out with my grandmother on Easter Sunday morning to collect bright yellow gorse flowers, with which we boiled our eggs for breakfast, resulting in golden yellow eggshells. There are "egg-rolling" competitions, where participants roll their decorated eggs down a very steep hill, chasing it all the way - the first to the finishing line with an unbroken egg is the winner! And of course the Easter egg hunt, to find all the eggs hidden by the Easter bunny, which is always a favourite with the children.

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