Why do we have Easter Eggs?

Have you ever wondered where the whole idea of the Easter Egg came from!

We have all grown up with stuffing ourselves with chocolate eggs at Easter time, egg hunts and painting eggs colourful colours… but where does the whole ‘chocolate egg’ idea come from?

Easter is a Christian festival and the egg is widely used as a symbol of the start of new life and the early Christians adopted it as a symbol of the resurrection and rebirth. So the custom of giving eggs at Easter celebrates new beginnings!

The first eggs given at Easter were birds eggs which were painted in bright colours and given as gifts. This is a lovely tradition worth passing on to our children though today its usually chicken eggs.
Also people gave gifts of eggs carved from wood or precious stones. The first sweet eggs that were eaten were made in the last 100 years from sugar or marzipan.

As for the ‘chocolate bunny’ well there is a legend that tell the story of a Saxon goddess who found a wounded bird and transformed it into a hare so that it would survive the winter….remarkably the hare discovered it could lay eggs and each spring left the eggs as offerings of thanks to the goddess.
So we have lovely traditions and folklore associated with Easter that we can all enjoy today and hopefully for years to come.

However, and not wanting to spoil the party, but the ‘Packaging’ of our yummy Easter Eggs today seriously needs to be looked at…. only 38% of what is in an Easter egg box is the Egg! Hats off to Nestle who produces 20m eggs for the UK and is the first major confectioner to make its range of Easter egg packaging 100% recyclable.

Our Chocolate though is first class the UK has amazing and hugely successful companies giving us delicious high quality chocolate of a very wide range. So enjoy your Easter Eggs and don’t forget to shop around for the best prices there are lots of promotions and deals in all the supermarkets and some great online exclusives…see our homepage!

So all in all the Message for Easter is to look forward and and be thankful for all that life offers us.

Have a very Happy Easter!