Easter Eggs

New Zealand Tablet, 13 April 1911, Page 659

Easter Eggs

The custom of giving and receiving eggs at Easter is of very ancient origin (says a writer in the Are Maria). This pasche, pace, or push egg, as it was called, from the Latin avium past-hale, was used by Christians as a symbol of the Resurrection. That the Church sanctioned the idea that eggs are emblematical of the rising of Christ from the dead is proved from the following prayer, to be found in an extract from the Ritual of Pope Paul V., for the use of England, Ireland, and Scotland: ‘ Bless, 0 Lord, we beseech Thee, this Thy creature of eggs, that it may become a wholesome sustenance to Thy faithful servants, eating it in thankfulness to Thee, on account of the Resurrection.’ Furthermore, we find an old writer quaintly describing the pace egg as ‘ an emblem of the rising up out of the grave, in the same manner as the chick, entombed as it were in the egg, is in due time brought to' life.’ The custom of giving and receiving Easter eggs was undoubtedly in vogue in England as early as the reign of King Edward I. in a ‘roll of the expenses of his household is this item in the accounts of Easter Sunday: ‘Four

hundred and a half of eggs, eighteen pence.’ This record ls interesting, not only because it gives evidence of the custom being a usual one at that period, but also because of the extreme smallness of the sum paid for the eggs, and because we learn from it the purpose for which so large a quantity was procured on this particular namely, in order to have them stained in boiling, or covered with gold-leaf, ‘ and to be afterwards distributed to the royal household.’ , . It is interesting, too, to note that amongst the Persians this custom of giving eggs prevails at the time of the solar new year, which is celebrated at the vernal equinox; and regarded not only as the renewal of all things, but as the triumph of the sun of nature whilst, among Christians, Easter is the solemn commemoration of the rising of the Sun of Justice from the tomb—the triumph of the Saviour of the world over death by His glorious Resurrection. Father Carmeli, in his History of Customs, tells us that, during Easter and the following days, ‘hard eggs, painted in various colors, but principally red, are 'the ordinary food of the season.’ And Hyde, in his Oriental Sports, mentions the fact that, amongst the Christians of Mesopotamia, on Easter Day and for forty days after, the children buy themselves as many eggs as they can, and stain them with a red color, in memory of the Precious Blood shed by our Divine Redeemer on the cross; ‘though some persons,’ he adds, tinge theirs with green and yellow.’