The unexpected history of Easter eggs

An estimated whopping 80 million chocolate eggs are sold each year in the UK alone. Perhaps less well-known are the customs of egg-rolling, pace-egging and egg-tapping (the last mentioned is basically a version of conkers, but with eggs!). But what is the history behind this current chocomania, which annually assaults both waistlines and teeth?

The egg itself has for centuries been one of the most important and adaptable symbols in myths and rituals across Europe and Asia, as Steve Roud makes clear in his book 'The English Year'. Within the Christian tradition of Easter, the egg has long symbolised new life, birth, purity, fertility and regeneration: the emergence of the chick from the egg represents the resurrection of Christ; the egg’s oval shape is symbolic of the stone rolled away from Christ’s tomb; while early Christians stained eggs red to remember the blood of Christ shed at the crucifixion.

More practically, eggs were a staple part of everyone’s diet – rich or poor – and crucially they were forbidden during Lent. This enforced abstinence explains their prominence in Shrovetide customs immediately before Lent, and at Easter when they make a return to the table. Eggs were given as gifts, paid as rent to social superiors in the medieval manor, and given to the church. In some farming communities, eggs functioned as a minor currency, and since hens were looked after by women within the household economy, this gave them a modest but regular income, as well as a rich source of protein with which to supplement their family’s diet.

The very act of giving eggs of varying sorts – coloured, papier-mâché and even bejeweled – as gifts at Easter itself has a long tradition, as is illuminatingly shown by Ronald Hutton in his book 'Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain'. In 1290 the household of the English king Edward I bought 450 eggs to be coloured, covered in gold leaf and distributed among his royal entourage.