BS: Easter Eggs query

Subject: Easter Eggs query
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 09:32 AM

I was talking to some friends about hiding and rolling Easter eggs. Back home (Norn Ireland) we always hid the chocolate Easter eggs on Easter Sunday then hunted round the garden for them, and then painted/dyed the real eggs on Easter Monday and rolled them down a hill (I found an earlier thread on this - apparently known as pace-egging).

Anyway, the people I talked to (one English, one Dutch, one Swedish) all looked at me as if I had two heads when I mentioned these practices. One of them conceded that they'd heard of real eggs being hidden and hunted, but they themselves didn't do this. How common a practice is it? I had a non-religious (irreligious?!) upbringing, but this was a custom we practised (without questioning or analysing it) because it was carrying on a tradition that my parents and their families had done (hey - it's the folk process!). I realise the egg-rolling is supposed to correspond to the rolling of the stone away from Jesus' tomb, but why the painting and why the hiding and hunting on Easter Sunday?

(On another note - for years we would gather lovely yellow whin blossom to dye our eggs. It wasn't 'til I was about 18 years old that we couldn't gather any that year, but when I expressed disappointment my dad informed me he'd been using yellow food colouring for years anyway as the whins had bugger all effect! Devastating...)

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: jeffp
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 09:42 AM

When I was growing up (in Maryland, US) we would dye hard-boiled eggs during the week before Easter. Or maybe it was Saturday, the day before Easter. Saturday night/Sunday morning my parents would hide the eggs all around the house, but mainly in the living room. My sister and I would search for them until we found them all, with my parents giving hints as necessary. Never hid chocolate eggs or rolled eggs. The White House hosts an Easter Egg Roll, though. It will be on Monday this year. Hmmmm..... April Fool's Day. Appropriate? You be the judge.

Hope this helps.

jeffp

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 09:48 AM

Thanks jeffp. Yeah, I came across mention of the White House egg roll when I searched on Google. Nice tradition!

I realise the egg has all sorts of connotations with rebirth and spring and the Christian Resurrection, etc. I wonder how the hunting and finding of the eggs fits into the Christian story? Or if (like Easter itself) it comes from an older tradition and was (as many other things were) modified and given a new meaning and background to suit the Early Church?

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:06 AM

You can probably research on the net and find all kinds of stories about the history and meaning of eggs. So I'll just relate a couple of personal stories.

I grew up dying real hard-boiled eggs usually a week (or maybe more) before Easter and then going to various organized Easter Egg Hunts, (Sunday School class, Girl Scouts, local neighborhood, etc.) Usually there were prizes for most eggs, least eggs, the golden egg, etc. When my kids were small and we lived in Alabama, we lived next door to a man who was head of the poultry farm at a university. He brought us 5 or 6 DOZEN small eggs (quail or some kind of exotic bird.) We were sick of hard boiled eggs. It was also the custom there to pickle the hard boiled eggs in beet juice and vinegar (after the hunt and hopefully before they were rotten).

Then of course on Easter morning the Easter Bunny (kinda like Santa Claus) fills the Easter baskets with candy that the kids set out the night before. That same bunny also hides their eggs (hard boiled or plastic filled with candy or chocolate). One Easter at our house the Easter Bunny overslept and my 6-year-old daughter came to my bedroom crying that the Easter Bunny forgot her. I then jumped out of bed, sent her in one direction, and THREW eggs all over the living room!

Then there was the time my daughter "proved" there was a Santa Claus because she "knew" there was an Easter Bunny and a Tooth Fairy. But that's another story.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: MMario
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:12 AM

We always had an Easter Egg hunt in our family - held on Easter day as a matter of fact; Eggs were dyed on the Saturday before Easter - or occasionally on Palm Sunday. (depended on what else was going on)

My sister for about 15 years held an easter egg hunt on the saturday before Easter. We would have up to 100 kids participating - the hunt covered several acres and took us the entire season of Lent to prepare.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:13 AM

LOL! I like the idea of throwing the eggs to hide 'em!
Yeah, I've had a look online but there's so much conjecture out there anyway...and besides, I love hearing peoples'personal stories, so thanks!

I had quite forgotten about the Easter Bunny. That was always more of a joke in our house rather than a "serious" myth like Santa. I can guess why rabbits are significant in springtime! *g*

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:15 AM

Mmario - sevaral acres? Blimey - that's one hell of a hunt!

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: sophocleese
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:19 AM

As a kid we would colour hard boiled eggs sometime before Easter day and then they would sit in the fridge until someone who actually liked hard boiled eggs would eat them. Eventually we learned to blow out the insides of the eggs instead of boiling them. Omelette for dinner that night which everyone enjoyed.

My parents would hide chocolate around the house and garden. I remember several Easters when the stock of smaller chocolates diminished when my oldest brother came home late and rifled the kitchen for goodies.

These days I colour eggs with the kids sometime on Easter weekend, although I may do it tonight. Early Sunday morning the Easter bunny wakes up, rubs the sleep from her eyes and heads outside to hide chocolates. An hour or so later the kids go running out to find what the squirrels haven't. I like to make a small treasure hunt with clues; Maltezers make great choclate Easter Bunny droppings.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: catspaw49
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:20 AM

I dunno' if I can help here too much Fibs, but I do have some info on:

How to Color Easter Eggs

AND

How to Make a Chocolate Bunny

Sorry for the long load if you're on dial up....just trying to help!

Spaw

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: GUEST,DMcG at work
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:23 AM

I lived near a park as a child and there was a specific hill - it must have been all of ten foot high - called Bell Hill which was where all the children from the area went to roll eggs.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: GUEST,Offspring
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:26 AM

There is custom in Country Durham, England, and possibly more of the North East, called 'jarping'. In this, people hard boil eggs and then each player takes one egg each. The players tap the 'pointed' ends together until one of the eggs breaks and the winner is the one that survives through to the end. Rather like conkers, but more gentle!

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:27 AM

Pardon the cut and paste above...the kids set out their baskets the night before Easter, and the Bunny comes during the night and fills them (the baskets, not the kids) with candy. As the kids get older, (for instance my 26-year-old daughter), they expect little gifts. ;-) Oops...just remembered, I haven't gotten my glass "turkeys" out of storage to fill with jelly beans yet. I also need to get all the baskets and grass and plastic eggs out of storage for my granddaughter. The problem with buying candy too early is that I eat it all and have to buy more.

Also, this is a heavily Catholic community, and everyone has a big Easter dinner. My grown children expect me to cook (horrors!) so I need to throw something together for next Sunday. Traditional foods are ham, deviled eggs, maybe peas...and of course candy! One of my favorites is to make an angel food cake with white icing and decorate it with grass and eggs. (the grass is coconut and green food coloring and the eggs are jelly beans.)

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:32 AM

Spaw - you are incorrigible! That's as bad as the photo I was sent of a roadkill rabbit with lots of squashed painted eggs around it, and a caption telling me to inform all children that Easter had been cancelled...

Mmmm - big Easter dinners. I'm going camping over Easter, so mine will no doubt be something cooked on a meths stove in the middle of nowhere.

Offspring - is there a way of artificially hardening the egg like they do with conkers? I can just picture all these cement-filled shells...

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:51 AM

I don't know about conkers...but another game often seen at Easter Egg Hunts is to throw non-hard-boiled eggs back and forth with a partner, and take a step back after each throw. The winner is the last person with an unbroken egg.

And music... Here Comes Peter Cottontail and Easter Parade.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Mrrzy
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:53 AM

One nice thing about my X2B - the best Easter Egg hunts going. Those buggers (plastic filled with stuff) would be HARD to find, and the hunt over all the acreage could take all day, really. My niblings used to come in from out of state to hunt eggs on our old property...

As a child, I remember going to the Embassy which always had an Easter Egg Hunt for the American kids... I found the silver one once, can't recall the prize. These were real eggs, hard-boiled. The real eggs, raw, were used for the egg TOSS, which is a great game in which pairs line up in 2 long lines facing each other; in one line each person has an egg and tosses it to their partner; if it's caught without breaking, both step back, toss back, step back and if the egg breaks you're out of the game. Daddy and I would win that one regularly, we had a system going.

But I know that we also did stuff with decorated, raw eggs, because one got lost in my closet and couldn't be found (this is how we discovered that I have no, or very little, sense of smell) for months... and by then it was growing things you wouldn't believe...

And then in my teens I got to BE the Easter Bunny for the smaller American children... I recall a very hot head in those tropics with all that white fur absorbing all the sun!

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: MMario
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 10:55 AM

Fibula - the hunt was divided into three sections - "toddlers" were in our front lawn and gardens - eggs, candy eggs, trinkets, etc were "hidden" there - that would take me about half an hour - basically those pieces were put so they were visible from at least one view. it would take me about a half hour to place the stuff.

The "little kids" were in the back yard from the house down to the 1/2 acre farm pond - a total of about 2 acres - mostly grass but with a few gardens and trees, some brush in areas - but primarily open. these items were hidden a bit better. About an hour to hide these things.

The rest of the kids "hunted" over about a mile and a half of trails cut through our woods. I would spend about an hoour and a half walking the trails flinging stuff into the brush as fast as I could.

When we let the kids loose - it would take about 15 minutes for them to clean up everything! A wee bit longer for the older kids as they did always check the ENTIRE trail.

As I said - we spent about 6 weeks getting ready for this - shopping bit by bit - dyeing several hundred eggs, MAKING candies and lollipops, sometimes making special treats. Wrapping everything (often had snow on the ground - or VERY soggy)

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: SharonA
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 11:03 AM

In my (US) family, when I was a child, we – kids and parents – would dye hard-boiled eggs a day or two before Easter. It was quite an elaborate process, with my two brothers and I trying to outdo one another's efforts. We had striped eggs, speckled eggs, swirled eggs, and my personal favorite: eggs that were colored with crayons before dyeing, preferably with something funny or punny written on them.

The eggs would be refrigerated until Easter morning, when they would be placed in our Easter boxes. The box was a wooden craft item my grandfather had made years earlier: a shallow rectangular box, with 2 standing rabbit silhouettes attached to the short ends of the box; a crosspiece (with 6 holes for the eggs to stand in) went from one rabbit to the other at neck level. Easter grass and candy was placed in the shallow box below. Any overflow-candy went into a regular Easter basket. Each child also had a decorated plastic egg with a hole in one end and a diorama scene inside, that went into the basket every year.

I don't remember attending more than one or two Easter Egg hunts in my lifetime, and no "rolls", but whatever I attended was sponsored by a neighborhood organization or a church. We never had a family Easter Egg hunt with real eggs; my parents sometimes hid eggs indoors but used the hollow plastic eggs (so that real eggs would not be forgotten and become spoiled after weeks under the sofa). Some of the plastic eggs had candy inside; some not.

BTW, a former co-worker of mine told me that her family tradition was to put money (in large bills – up to $100!) inside the plastic eggs and hide them around her house for her kids (even the adult kids) to find!

But my parents had a family tradition that I've never heard of, anywhere else: "Noggins". On Easter morning my mother would make soft-boiled eggs an put them in a bowl on the table. At breakfast, each of us would choose an egg, then tap the end of it (gently) against the end of the egg of the next person at the table until one of the eggs cracked. The rule was that the ends of the eggs had to correspond at first (pointy egg against pointy end, and dull end against dull end). If one person's egg remained uncracked, that person won the cracked egg from the other person. If each person had one cracked end, then the two uncracked ends would be tapped against one another until one cracked, and the person with one egg-end still intact would win the cracked egg. The loser would then take another egg from the bowl and try again. The game continued until the bowl was empty and one person emerged victorious with an egg with at least one uncracked end. Of course, this resulted in some people having more "loser" eggs on their plates than others, but at the end of the game we would divide the eggs evenly among the family members before we ate the eggs for breakfast. Has anyone else ever played this game?

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 11:07 AM

Pace-egging is also the Easter play tradition that we did our first performances of last night!

Set me off thinking though - just how common are our traditions? As I said pace-egging I believe is a play whereas Fibula has obviously seen a reference to the rolling of eggs as pace-egging. How common are hot cross buns for instance? Nationwide? Worldwide? And why? What about the ditty -

Hot cross buns, hot cross buns
One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns
If you have no daughters, give them to your sons
One a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns

Why do daughters take precidence in this case?

Hmmmmm???

Just wondering

Cheers

Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: SharonA
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 11:09 AM

Sorry, Offspring, I missed your post about "Jarping" since I was busy writing my own at the time you posted. Indeed, your "Jarping" sounds an awful lot like my "Noggins"!

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: mack/misophist
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 11:13 AM

Ancient practices live on forever. Any good dictionary will tell you that "Easter" is derived from the name of a fertility goddess whose symbols were eggs and rabbits.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: MMario
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 11:22 AM

But for most of the Christian churches the Holiday is Pascha or some variation thereof. "Easter" is pretty much English language only - and not used exclusively for the religious observence even in English.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: MMario
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 11:33 AM

And then there is this explanation:

Among Latin-speaking Christians, the week beginning with the Feast of the Resurrection was known as "hebdomada alba" (white week), since the newly-baptized Christians were accustomed to wear their white baptismal robes throughout that week. Sometimes the week was referred to simply as "albae." Translaters rendering this into German mistook it for the plural of "alba," meaning "dawn." They accordingly rendered it as EOSTARUM, which is Old High German for "dawn." This gave rise to the form EASTER in English.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: IanC
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 11:42 AM

MMario

Sounds like a rationalised one though, as the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring was called Eostre. Don't know about her association with eggs, rabbits (or hats) but that's the case. Early English documents attest to this.

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: GUEST,DMcG at work
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 11:51 AM

Interesting explanation MMario - but don't you think it a bit odd that it ended up so close to EOSTER, who was, I believe, a dawn goddess? Without more evidence - which I am sure you will give in reams! - it sounds suspiciously like one of the ways the early Church would incorporate existing traditions. I'm not sure blaming everything on the ignorant Germans who didn't understand good Latin is an approach I would want to defend either *BG*

(By the way, I thought traditionally the catecumens would be baptised during the Easter Vigil, which would make Easter the week after Easter Sunday on this explanation)

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: IanC
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 11:53 AM

Whilst I'm about it, I may as well say that egg-rolling has never, to my knowledge, been called Pace Egging (or Pasche Egging). This is a kind of mummers play in which the participants claim to be begging for eggs and/or beer (as here).

I've done this quite a few times and I think it was explained in the previous thread somewhere.

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 12:02 PM

Aha! I picked up pace-egging wrong. So whence egg-rolling and hunting then?
I knew about Eostre/Easter, but wasn't able to find any reference to such eggy customs.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: MMario
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 12:06 PM

I actually found about 6 or seven diffent theories of the derivation of "Easter" - the truth of the matter is that in the 700's (1300 years ago) the term "Easter" was already in use and it's derivation had already been lost. Bede's writings conjectured that it was derived from Eostre. (which is believed in itself to have derived from a word meaning "Dawn")

For MOST of the Christian world the holiday is named using a derivation of the Hebrew for "Passover"

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: IanC
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 12:13 PM

MMario

I thought that Pasche came from Christ's Passion (why Pasche flowers are also called Passion Flowers).

I'll admit that my direct reading of Old English documents only goes back as far as the 9th or 10th century, (though not just Bede), where the goddess seems to be referred to as Erce as well as Eostre and seems also to be related to an earth deity. Can you point me to a C7th source for an earlier reading?

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: MMario
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 12:46 PM

Ian - I'm taking my stuff from discussions on the web - have to admit they are third hand - I don't have access to much else.

"Passion" (in this context - the Passion of Christ) derives from Pascha - which came from Passover. I *think* the emotion has a seperate derivation.

DMcG - correct - baptism at the Easter Vigil and "Easter" is the Feast of the Resurection plus the week following - the Easter Octave. (Which is TECHNICALLY still true - though in common usage most people just refer to the Feast of the Resurection as "Easter")

I just wanted to point out the Eostre/Easter thing pertains only to English/German language groups -

Easter has been historically tied to the Judiac Passover celebration (still is pretty much - though Passover and Easter can get out of synch as slightly different rules are used to figure the date of celebration) and most language groups do NOT use a derivation of Eostre in reference to the celbration.

Of course there are those who also point at Passover as being 'stolen' from one or another pagan spring ritual.

But then again - I'd have my doubts that ANY religion is completly free of concepts that used somewhere else.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Mrs.Duck
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 01:28 PM

The anglo-saxon goddess Eostre was the goddess of the spring and new life. She was often depicted as a hare because of their ability to conceive whilst still pregnant and therefore produce large numbers of young. The egg was also a symbol of new life for obvious reasons. In England I don't think the custom of egg hunts is very common but egg rolling I have come accross all over the country. It seems more often to take place on the Monday but this may be because of the religious observances on Easter Sunday. We always used to decorate eggs on Easter morning and then eat them! I have also ben involved in egg tossing contests but these did not happen near Easter.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 02:14 PM

How long have chocolate Easter eggs existed? Or maybe I should ask, when did they become common? I have a hunch they haven't existed long enough for any long-standing traditions to be associated with them. Whatever people do with chocolate eggs nowadays was probably formerly done with real eggs.

Speaking of which, I get the impression (not backed up by any serious study) that the use of real eggs at Easter is disappearing, and being replaced by chocolate and other candy eggs. At least I know some families don't bother with them. It's so much easier to buy the candy kind.

When I was a kid, we used to boil and dye a dozen or more eggs every Easter, and then eat them for a week or so afterwards. I think when I was very young, we didn't have candy eggs at all.

I grew up in St. Louis, MO, if anyone cares, in the 1950's.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: MMario
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 02:19 PM

Jim - my memories also - early years were pretty much just hard boiled eggs and jelly beans - tho' MOM always got a spun sugar "peep in" egg

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: swirlygirl
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 02:25 PM

I did make an egg in the guise of Wurzel Gummidge once and won a 6 pack of creme eggs for it, if that's of any interest to anyone?

:)

xxx

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 02:39 PM

The decorated Easter Egg is common to members of the Russian Orthodox and Ukranian Orthodox Churches. The practice is common in the western provinces of Canada and in the northern tier of the United states where many Ukranians settled. There are books on the methods. The contents of the eggs are removed through tiny holes at the top and base of the egg. The surface is painted in very complex designs, incorporating religious symbols. Some take days to do and are highly sought for by collectors.
Surprised that the Fabergé jeweled eggs made for wealthy Russians and Ukranians have not been mentioned.
The practice seems to go back to the origins of the Orthodox churches. Some of the decorators use pre-Christian pagan designs.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 02:57 PM

Books and equipment are available from the Ukrainian Gift Shop, 2512 - 39th Ave. NE, Minneapolis MN, 55421-4207. They are in St. Anthony, but the PO uses Minneapolis as the address. Web site : pysanka egg
The best simple book is by Luciow and Kmit, Eggs Beautiful, How to Make Ukrainian Easter Eggs.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Crane Driver
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 05:29 PM

The commercial chocolate egg is a way of selling a pound's worth of chocolate for five pounds (or even more if it's wrapped in an advert for the latest film or pop star). All the old traditions featured real eggs, decorated at home. We did the egg hunt when I was young too - that must be old enough to be traditional!

As with music, so with eggs - nowadays, people would rather pay someone else a grossly inflated price for doing something we used to do ourselves, just because they can make a more spectacular job of it. So "community" becomes "consumerism" and we all lose out. That's progress, folks.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 26 Mar 02 - 06:36 PM

I always make Phoebe hunt for her Easter egg.... but that's because I'm sadistic and like to make her suffer.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: IanC
Date: 27 Mar 02 - 05:14 AM

MMario

Please accept my apologies for playing with you a little yesterday (there are, of course, no textual sources from the C7th). I may, also, be slightly out in identifying Erce with Eostre, as this one-off (from The Lacnuga) may be one of the names for Nerthus, the earth goddess. I'm inclined to wonder, though, if (in common with some other celtic groups) the germanic tribes didn't have a triple goddess.

The real clincher that Eostre is a goddess actually comes from the calendar. Before the use of the Julian calendar (which came with Christianity), the germanic tribes (and presumably other celtic tribes, though most of these were conquered too early by the Romans for the information to reliably exist) had their own calendar and, as with the days of the week, many of the months were named after gods or goddesses. The month most closely approximating April was named for Eostre (Old English) or Ostara (Old High German) in her honour as (OE) Eosturmonað, (OHG) Ostarmanoth.

I believe it was Grimm, in the C19th, who identified the meaning of the word as being similar to the word used for dawn and light. He was quite a good etymologist but it can be nothing more than an educated guess, even so (though he was most probably right). If he was right, she may well have been a sky goddes, though her identification with fertility would then be rather more difficult.

I wonder if the d-thorn comes out on Mudcat!!!

Cheers!
Ian

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 27 Mar 02 - 05:16 AM

LOL Liz! And she seemed such a sweet young thing - how could you inflict such torture? O, the cruel mother!

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 27 Mar 02 - 08:39 AM

easter eggs are a BIG Rip off! you will pay probably2pounds for a small tiny piece of chocolate and they make your'e teeth fall out anyway, if you've got any kids give them an orange instead.it is cheaper as well (only about 10p from the fruit shop) do you have easter eggs in America?

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: alison
Date: 27 Mar 02 - 09:01 AM

Fib.... I don't remember having to find eggs, (except for the time I was on "Romper room"...... I also got bitten by a baby chick.... but that's another story!!)... I do remember picking gorse / whins... and dyeing eggs yellow.........

and we used to go to Whitehead on Easter Monday to roll them down the hill......... not sure you were meant to try to roll the cadburys buttons ones though!!


slainte

alison

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: SharonA
Date: 27 Mar 02 - 09:05 AM

Hoo boy, do we have Easter eggs in America! Chocolate eggs of every size, hollow or solid. Candy-coated eggs with chocolate or malted milk inside. Peanut-butter eggs. Crunchy rice-and-chocolate eggs. Marshmallow eggs. We've even got Cadbury eggs – with the traditional white-and-yellow filling or with caramel or who-knows-what-all filling!!!

Do you have advertisements featuring the clucking Cadbury Bunny, in Britain?

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Fibula Mattock
Date: 27 Mar 02 - 09:45 AM

Hmmm, there's the sexy bunny from the Cadbury's Caramel adverts - Miriam Margolyes did the voice for that I think. Dunno about a clucking bunny though...

alison - excellent - the rolling of (normal hardboiled) eggs on Easter Monday verified by a Norn Iron source! Now spill the beans about "Romper Room"!

And any other UK catters remember toffee-mallow eggs (or was that another N. Irish thing?)? Whatever happened to them? They weren't quite marshmallow, weren't quite caramel, but were an absolutely gorgeous, strange-textured mix of the two.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: MMario
Date: 27 Mar 02 - 09:59 AM

My favorite Cadbury's advertisement was the one where they were "auditioning" - with the lion and the tortoise dressed up in bunny ears!

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: SharonA
Date: 27 Mar 02 - 10:07 AM

The original clucking-bunny ad showed a white rabbit crouching and wiggling its nose, with a dubbed human voice saying "buck-buck-buck-buck..." synchronized with the nose-wiggling. The bunny then hopped away revealing that it had just "laid" a Cadbury egg.

The Cadbury Bunny is popular enough here to have inspired a tie-in toy: a plush bunny with a button inside its paw that one squeezes to hear the "buck-buck-buck" sound! Its nose doesn't wiggle, though. Cadbury sells it with a couple of eggs included in its packaging.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: michaelr
Date: 27 Mar 02 - 11:03 PM

Oh boy, I get to be first to post this old saw:

Q: Why does the Easter Bunny hide his eggs?

A: So no one will know he's been f@*king chickens!

;-) Michael

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: GUEST,BB
Date: 28 Mar 02 - 10:27 PM

Boil the eggs in a pan filled with brown-onion-skins. Let cool in same. Dry wipe with oil. Wonderful, mahogony color.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Mudlark
Date: 28 Mar 02 - 10:41 PM

In Michigan, when I was a kid, one dozen eggs were always boiled, then dyed on the Sat. before Easter. Wax resist (crayon markings that would not take the dye) were kosher, but transfers and (worst yet) stickers, were looked down on. Two- and three-tones and swirled colors were given high marks, however. If I remember right, the dyed eggs were then hidden to find Easter morning, the commercially made goodies were put in easter baskets (much eaier to find) and those inedible hard sugar peek-in eggs were always my favorites. And what about Peeps...those horrid yellow marshmallowy baby chick things that were used to pad out the basket. And all that green excelsior (sp?). I think my mother saved it, year to year. Memory unclear on this but it sees to me that the easter bunny was understood at an early age to be a myth, unlike Santa which most of the kids I knew hung onto as long as poss. But everybody seemed to know that M/D bot the candy, hid the eggs, and later, in better times, even inserted a stuffy (stuffed toy) into the baskets as well.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Hrothgar
Date: 06 Apr 02 - 11:46 PM

And just to lower the tone - one of the advantages of having Alzheimer's is that you can hide your own Easter ggs!

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: GUEST
Date: 07 Apr 02 - 04:21 PM

We each make and exchange Ukranian eggs. They require from one to twenty hours to make. We don't eat them and we don't hide them.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 Apr 02 - 12:10 AM

I too grew up with just hardcooked eggs and jelly beans for Easter. Never even heard of egg rolling- we had Easter egg hunts though.

Here in Juneau back about 4 years ago (knowing my memory, that probably means it's been 10 years!) the community had to start holding the egg hunt indoors.

See, the year before, they had hidden 100 eggs in a grassy area and then gone to the hall to greet the children.

It seems that ravens had been watching every move. When the organizers and children came back for the great event, they literally didn't find one whole egg. The ravens had enjoyed them all.

Ebbie

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: GUEST
Date: 09 Apr 02 - 12:12 AM

We had a dozen different ways to use the hardboiled ones - the strangest being creamed eggs (chopped up) on toast.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Gypsy
Date: 09 Apr 02 - 09:11 PM

Errrr....don't say that Passover and Easter really have anything in common very loudly. You might get some real protests on that one. Anyway, top of the head explanation? Eggs are the symbol of life. So is Jesus. On Easter, people were looking for him. That is the whole story for our religion. The one line: He's not here.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: GUEST,No Protest
Date: 10 Apr 02 - 05:55 AM

On Passover a lamb's blood was placed on the lentel and post so the plague upon the first born son would passover the home.

On Easter, it is a celebration of Christ's blood being placed within our lives so God will passover our sins and the visual celbration of Christ's power over death.

It was not "just coincidental" that Christ, "the Lamb of God" was crucified on the eve-of the Passover.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Gypsy
Date: 10 Apr 02 - 07:28 PM

interesting concept.

Subject: RE: BS: Easter Eggs query
From: Dicho (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Apr 02 - 08:24 PM

The Ukrainians trace their decorated Easter eggs back to pagan times. Some have revived the old pagan decorations and I have several of these. Eggs were the symbol of rebirth, and their use in ceremonies is pre-Christian.