Easter Eggs

Eggs, the most pervasive image of Easter and even its pagan equivalent, Ostara. Yet we find ourselves asking, ‘why egg?’ They are obvious fertility symbols and the connection between spring and fertility is found across the world. We get that. New life comes from an egg, so there will be eggs at the spring celebrations. Doesn't take a genius to figure that out. They are also an important foodstuff for so many cultures. They are high in protein and basically a renewable resource since you don’t have to kill a bird or reptile to get them. Everything is making sense here. In Christian traditions eggs and birth inevitably get tied to Jesus and his rebirth. Fine, whatever. It kind of makes sense. 

But what is the obsession with decorating eggs? Is it because they are white? Because humans have always had a maximalist style when it comes to celebrations? We have found engraved, decorated ostrich eggs in Africa that are 60,000 years old! That is officially pre-history. There’s nothing that looks anything like civilization, but we were decorating some eggs, man. The origin I know comes from the myth of Eostre, a spring goddess of central Europe. A rabbit decorated some eggs for her and she liked them. That’s basically it. Whether the rabbit laid the eggs or not is a subject of some debate, but that’s it. That answers nothing!

This practice of decorating eggs even extends to the Fabergé eggs. They are synonymous with wealth, royalty, mystery, and luxury. And they were commissioned as an Easter present by the Tsar of Russia. He could have commissioned anything and yet he chose decorated eggs. All of the references to folkloric egg decorating relate to Easter or Ostara, but none truly get to the root of the practice. There are practices and associations that you find in folklore that seem to be inevitable, like there is something hardwired in our brains to think this way. Decorating eggs is one of them. But it makes me wonder if there are worlds, parallel universes, different timelines in which this practice is slightly different. Worlds where, for the spring festival, they decorate shed snake skins or the nut of a certain tree?

Do you decorate eggs? What are your spring traditions? Do you know why we do this? Are you hiding something from me? Do you know where the lost Faberegé eggs are???

[originally posted to Patreon on 26/3/25]