Egg-zactly

Okay, so what’s up with Easter Eggs? Are they some weird hangover from paganism? Can Christians enjoy hiding and finding them? Or should they eschew them (and the chocolate inside them)?

I’ll admit it. This is one of those gray areas for believers. Still, it’s worth considering, and I’d like to share a few thoughts on the topic…

Let’s see, I don’t think it takes a genius to recognize why an egg became a universal symbol of birth and resurrection. Hold an egg in your hand, and you can see in it the potential for life. It serves as a reminder that life begets life and on and on and on. Okay.

Accordingly, it doesn’t surprise me that, from earliest times, and in most cultures, the egg signified birth and resurrection. The Egyptians buried eggs in their tombs. The Greeks placed eggs atop graves. The Romans coined a proverb: Omne vivum ex ovo, “All life comes from an egg.”

Yes, these were pagan cultures, but they were each observing a God-given reality, that life, death, and the hope of life after death were reflected in the lowliest egg. Even in ignorance of the true God, they had observed a spiritual picture that would serve later as a redemptive analogy.

Legend has it – and this legend is surely apocryphal – that Simon of Cyrene, the guy who helped carry Christ’s cross to Calvary, was by trade an egg merchant. According to the legend, he returned from the crucifixion to his produce farm and discovered that all his hen’s eggs had miraculously turned a rainbow of colors. (Yes, it’s a weird story. Sort of the equivalent of a ‘viral fake-video’ in the second century.) Anyhow, when the Church started to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ annually, a decision formalized at the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, it did not have to search far for a popular and easily recognizable symbol.

Back in those times, wealthy people would cover a gift egg with gilt or gold leaf, while peasants often dyed their eggs. This tinting was achieved by boiling the eggs with certain flowers, leaves, logwood chips, or the cochineal insect (a crimson-colored beetle-ish bug). Spinach leaves or anemone petals were considered best for green; the bristly gorse blossom for yellow; logwood for rich purple; and the body fluid of the cochineal produced scarlet. (Yuck. I wonder if they ate them later?)

In parts of Germany during the 1880s, Easter eggs substituted for birth certificates. An egg was dyed a solid color, then a design, which included the recipient’s name and birth date, was etched into the shell with a needle or sharp tool. Such Easter eggs were honored in law courts as evidence of identity and age.

The most valuable Easter eggs ever crafted were also made in the 1880s. Made by the great goldsmith Peter Carl Faberge, they were commissioned by Czar Alexander III of Russia as gifts for his wife, Czarina Maria Feodorovna. The first Faberge egg, presented in 1886, measured two and a half inches long and had a deceptively simple exterior. Inside the white enamel shell, though was a golden yok, which when opened revealed a gold hen with ruby eyes. The hen itself could be opened, by lifting the beak, to expose a tiny diamond replica of the imperial crown. A still smaller ruby pendant hung from the crown. The Faberge treasures today are collectively valued at over four million dollars. Forty-three of the fifty-three eggs known to have been made by Faberge are now in museums and private collections. (And, no, contrary to popular belief, the other ten are not in the cupboard at the pastor’s house.)

Okay, that’s about all I can find on Easter eggs and their significance, but I suspect I’ll find out, after I send this, that eggs were decorated and used in all sorts of pagan festivals before the birth of Christ. But, frankly, that wouldn’t surprise me. The reality of the egg and its role in the life cycle, its significance, has been recognized by humanity since the Creation. That humanity would fail to see the ultimate picture behind the egg does not surprise me either. This is simply a manifestation of humanity’s blindness occasioned by sin and separation from Almighty God.

But it seems utterly appropriate to me that the Church, those who have had their spiritual eyes opened through life in Christ, should reclaim that picture and utilize it to proclaim it as the redemptive analogy it is. I believe this is the Church’s responsibility, to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ, using the Scriptures and the Creation to declare God’s existence, His righteousness, the reality of death and separation occasioned by man’s sin, and the hope of eternal life available through Jesus Christ. And, to the extent that our use of an egg facilitates that proclamation, terrific!

In blunt and practical terms, let me say it this way: Easter eggs are fun. They are fun to dye, they are fun to hide, and they are fun to find. The plastic ones are fun to fill with candies, and they are even more fun to open. And egg hunts? Kids enjoy the game of ‘hide-n-go-seek’, and the parents and grandparents enjoy watching it. It’s fun to watch the kids sort through the candy and choose which ones they’ll scarf down and which they’ll save.

More importantly, Easter eggs, egg hunts, and all the traditions that go along with them serve as wonderful conversation starters for the reality they are meant to commemorate -- the fact that Jesus is alive! We should utilize all these opportunities to talk with our children and friends about Jesus Christ, about His death, burial and Resurrection. We should talk with them creatively about all the parallels we see. Here’s my feeble attempt…

“I thought I was a ‘good egg,’

But really was a bad one,

Dead on the inside,

Apart from the Son.

I hid from God, and I was lost,

But then He sought me and paid the cost,

With costly care, He found me and loved me,

And washed me in His crimson sea.

He made me alive,

and He’s transforming my soul;

He’s decorating me brilliantly

and making me whole.”

Easter eggs. What do you think? How will you use this Easter Sunday and its traditions to talk to others about Jesus?