by Pamela Kay

Created on: April 17, 2009   Last Updated: June 10, 2009

The same Easter eggs that are Christian symbols of new and renewed life today, were once the sacred symbols of pagan religions. To understand how they transitioned to become a symbol of Christianity, we must trace the origin of Easter eggs past the eighth century, when the transition occurred, to a time before written history.

Far back in history, various cultures endowed the egg with the powers of bringing forth life and made it a symbol of rebirth and fertility. This probably began before recorded history when someone noticed that the ending of winter coincided with the time that birds laid their eggs and the earth brought forth new growth to all living things. Finding that first egg each spring must have been a wondrous thing after a winter of struggling to survive and so it became a symbol for new birth.

As time passed, many pagan traditions grew up around these first beliefs and were passed verbally from one generation to the next, making the egg an already important part of many cultures when written history began. For example, the Egyptians, Persians, Phoenicians, and Hindus all believed the world was a giant egg that hatched and brought forth all life.

So, we know from history that eggs were long-standing symbols of creation, fertility, new life and resurrection, used at spring festivals as far back as ancient Egypt and Persia, when eating colored eggs was the tradition. But, how did they become a part of modern day Easter celebrations?

The word Easter actually comes from the Anglo-Saxon word Eostre, who was the goddess of spring worshiped by pagans. Pope Gregory the Great, in an effort to draw these pagan worshipers into the church ordered his missionaries to incorporate the pagan symbols, places of worship and traditions with those of the Church and so, the Easter egg became a symbol of the stone being rolled away from the tomb of Christ and of His rebirth.

Some believe Eostre is a corruption of Astarte, who was the mother-goddess of ancient Assyrians, and was also known as Ishtar of later Egyptians. The belief was that Astarte was hatched from an egg dropped in the Euphrates River.

Today, few know of, or care about, the pagan origins of the Easter egg and see it only as a symbol of the rebirth or resurrection of Jesus Christ on that First Easter Sunday 2000 years ago. Some eggs are lavishly decorated and given as gifts but mostly they are used in Easter baskets and for egg hunts for children.

Source

http://www.england-in-particular.info/calendar/c-eas ter.html

http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/brief-history-of- origins-symbols-of-easter.html

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