A History of Easter & Easter Eggs

Source: www.aphrodite-chocolates.co.uk – by Aphrodite Handmade ChocolatesAlthough we think of them as Christian, a closer look at the history of Easter and the Easter Egg reveals a much earlier association with pagan ritual and in particular, the pagan rites of spring, dating back into pre history.

In most parts of the world chocolate is associated with romance, and not without with good reason. It was viewed as an aphrodisiac by the Aztec’s who thought it increased the prowess of men and made women less inhibited, so when chocolate was first introduced to Europe, it was only natural that chocolate quickly became the ideal gift for a woman to receive from an admirer or a loved one. Click Here for our handmade Easter eggs Click Here For our handmade Easter gift chocolates A HISTORY OF EASTER and EASTER EGGS Delve into the history and origins of the Christian festival of Easter and you come up with a few surprises. For instance, Easter eggs do not owe their origins to Christianity and originally the festival of Easter itself and the giving of Easter gifts had nothing to do with Christianity either. A closer look at the history of both Easter and the Easter Egg reveals a much earlier association with pagan ritual and in particular, the pagan rites of spring, dating back into pre history.  For us, the ancient rites celebrating the Spring Equinox are most obviously associated with the mysterious Druids and places like Stone Henge, but most ancient races around the world had similar spring festivals to celebrate the rebirth of the year. The Egg, as a symbol of fertility and re-birth, has been associated with these rites from the earliest times. The Christian Festival Of Easter In fact, the festival of Easter is a classic example of the early Christian church adapting an existing pagan ritual to suit their own purposes. The Saxon spring festival of Eostre, was named for their goddess of dawn, and when they came to Britain in about the 5th century AD, the festival came with them along with re-birth and fertility rituals involving eggs, chicks and rabbits. When the Saxons converted to Christianity and started to celebrate the death and the resurrection of Christ, it coincided with Eostre, so that’s what the early church in Britain called the celebration, Eostre or Easter in modern English.  The actual date that Easter falls on every year is governed by a fairly complex calculation related to the Spring Equinox. The actual formula is: The first Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring Equinox is Easter Sunday or Easter Day. This formula was set by Egyptian astronomers in Alexandria in 235ad, and calculated using the same method as the Jews have traditionally used to calculate the feast of the Passover, which occurred at about the same time as the crucifixion.   Early Easter Eggs As well as adopting the pagan festival of Eostre, the Egg, representing fertility and re-birth in pagan times, was also adopted as part of the Christian Easter festival and it came to represent the ‘resurrection’ or re-birth of Christ after the crucifixion, Some Christians believe it is a symbol of the the stone blocking the Sepulchre being ‘rolled’ away.  In the UK and Europe, the earliest Easter eggs were painted and decorated hen, duck or goose eggs, a practice still carried on in many parts of the world today. As time went by, artificial eggs were made and by the end of the 17th century, manufactured eggs made of various materials were available for purchase at Easter, for giving as Easter gifts and presents.  Easter eggs continued to evolve through the 18th and into the 19th Century, with hollow cardboard eggs filled with gifts and sumptuously decorated, culminating in the ultimate in Easter eggs, the fabulous Faberge Eggs. Encrusted with jewels, they were made for the Czar’s of Russia by Carl Faberge, a French jeweller, surely these were the ‘ultimate’ Easter gift, to buy even a small one now would make you poorer by several millions of pounds sterling.  Chocolate Easter Eggs It was at about this time (early 1800’s) that the first chocolate Easter eggs appeared in Germany and France and soon spread to the rest of Europe and beyond. The first chocolate eggs were solid and they were soon followed by hollow eggs. Making hollow eggs at that time was no mean feat, because the easily worked chocolate we use today didn’t exist then, they had to use a crude paste made from ground roasted Cacao beans.  By the turn of the 19th Century, the discovery of the modern chocolate making process and improved mass manufacturing methods meant that the hollow, moulded Chocolate Easter Egg was fast becoming the Easter gift of choice in the UK and many parts of Europe, and by the 1960’s it was well established worldwide. Easter Gifts & Presents Handmade Rainforest Alliance Chocolate Easter Eggs ©2002 – 2009 – Aphrodite Handmade Chocolates (www.aphrodite-chocolates.co.uk) ©2009 – PERMISSION TO COPY. This article is Copyright of Aphrodite Handmade Chocolates and is protected by international copyright law. You are welcome to copy it and print it for personal or non profit, or educational purposes only and you have our permission to do so, provided it is copied and re-published in it’s entirety complete with copyright notice and website address. If you wish to copy it for electronic publication on an intranet, website, blog or Newsletter you may do so provided  the article is copied and re-published in it’s entirety with all html, copyright information and hyperlinks intact and unaltered in any way with no redirects. If you wish to copy it for any other purpose please contact us for permission first. contact@aphrodite-chocolates.co.uk