chocolate Easter eggs: Easter eggs chocolate: Here’s evolution for eggs which symbolize rebirth and renewal
The Origin of Easter Eggs
It’s not known exactly when people started decorating their eggs, but research points to the 13th century, when King Edward I gave his courtiers eggs wrapped in gold leaf.
A few centuries later, we know that people all over Europe were dyeing their eggs different colors. They would usually choose yellow using onion skins or red using madder roots or beets. Red eggs are thought to symbolize the blood of Jesus. A 17th-century writer suggested that this practice dated back to the early Christians in Mesopotamia, but it is difficult to know for sure.
The most popular method of decoration in England was petals with colored markings. The Wordsworth Museum in the Lake District still has a collection of eggs from the 1870s for the poet’s children.
From Painted Eggs to Chocolate Eggs
Although dyeing patterned eggs is still a common Easter activity, these days eggs are more associated with chocolate. So when did this change happen? When chocolate arrived in Britain in the 17th century, it was an exciting and very expensive innovation. In 1669, the Earl of Sandwich became King Henry II. He paid £227 (equivalent to around £32,000 today) for Charles’ chocolate recipe.
Today chocolate is considered a solid food, but at the time it was just a beverage and was often spiced with paprika in accordance with Aztec and Mayan traditions. For the British, this exotic new drink was unlike anything they had ever encountered before. One writer called it “American Nectar”: a drink for the gods.
Chocolate soon became a fashionable drink for aristocrats and was often given as a gift due to its high status; This tradition is still continued today. It was also consumed with pleasure in the newly opened coffeehouses around London. Coffee and tea had also just been introduced to England, and all three beverages were rapidly changing the way Britons socially interacted with each other.
Catholic theologians associated chocolate with Easter during this period, however, out of concern that drinking chocolate would violate fasting practices during Lent. After heated discussions, a consensus was reached that chocolate made with water was acceptable during fasting. At least at Easter—a time of feasting and celebration—chocolate was good.
Chocolate remained expensive until the 19th century, when Fry’s (now part of Cadbury) made the first solid chocolate in 1847, revolutionizing the chocolate trade.
For the Victorians, chocolate was much more accessible but still a treat. Thirty years later, in 1873, Fry developed the first chocolate Easter egg as a luxury treat, combining two gift-giving traditions.
Even in the early 20th century, these chocolate eggs were considered a special gift, and many people did not even eat them. A woman in Wales kept an egg from 1951 for 70 years, and a museum in Torquay recently acquired an egg that had been stored since 1924.
It was only in the 1960s and 1970s that supermarkets began offering chocolate eggs at a cheaper price, hoping to profit from the Easter tradition.
Future Easters may look a little different as concerns grow about long-term chocolate production and bird flu causes egg shortages. But if there’s one thing Easter eggs can show us, it’s the adaptability of tradition.
