Happy Easter
Northampton PA
2022

Everyone knows that Easter egg coloring and the traditional Easter egg hunt are activities tied to the celebration of the Easter story. Easter is a biblical holiday that celebrates Jesus’ resurrection after being crucified on the cross.

Each year, individuals and families gather to celebrate Jesus’ rising from the dead. From church services to religious activities, the commemorations are plentiful. Easter egg decorating is just one such activity people do generally before the holiday unfolds.

But, why? Why do we celebrate with the traditional Easter egg hunt and Easter egg coloring? Where did the tradition actually come from? Is it based on Scripture or is it just a modern-day secular practice that people engage in for the mere fun of it? That’s what we’ll be exploring in this piece.

To begin, eggs themselves tend to signify life. And Jesus’ rise from the dead clearly gives mankind eternal life, so the parallels shouldn’t be lost on us.

It might be hard to definitively nail down the history of Easter egg decorations, but we can surely see the use of eggs more generally throughout history during the time of Easter. As it turns out, Easter eggs actually date back to Medieval Europe, though the practice of celebrating with these eggs might not have started with Christians and might have instead been a Pagan practice, according to Time.

There are different theories about the origin of Easter eggs, but Carole Levin, professor of history and director of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Nebraska, told the outlet that eggs were part of an Anglo-Saxon festival that celebrated the goddess Eastre.

As for specific Easter egg decorating, Britannica noted that the first instance of painted Easter eggs dates back to the 13th century. The tradition in Orthodox and Eastern churches is that early Christians would paint the eggs red to symbolize the blood of Christ that was shed on the Cross.

Early Christian missionaries dyed the eggs different colors to represent different aspects of the Easter story. Yellow was used to represent the resurrection, blue to represent love and red again was used to represent the blood of Christ.