Easter is coming!
Who invented the first Easter Egg?
The earliest recorded decorated egg shells are of Ostrich eggs, dating back at least 60,000 years in South Africa (fragments have been found in caves). And eggs have a long, and fertile, history with Zorastrians gifting eggs to their King Norwuz in celebration of the New Year over 2,500 years.
Here in the UK, Edward I of England dyed over 450 eggs with onion skins and gifted them to his court in 1290. And back to ostrich eggs, some of the chefs in Louis XIVs court filled them with chocolate as presents for the Versailles Court. At about the same time, the famous chocolatier (and widow), Seignora Giambone of Turin, started filling empty chicken egg shells with molten chocolate in 1725.
(for more, please see here).
Who first marketed Easter eggs here in the uk?
Chocolate was co-opted into Easter by the Victorians. In addition to claiming the world’s first chocolate bar in 1847, J.S. Fry & Sons claim to have launched the first British Chocolate Easter egg in 1873, closely followed by Cadbury’s in 1875 (Cadbury’s did pip Fry’s to the post for Valentine’s Day boxes — see here). It’s hard to obtain exact numbers but estimates of the UK giving over 80 million eggs are often quoted – and that doesn’t include Creme Eggs (Cadbury’s sells over 500 million of these each year, despite “shrinkflation”, with two thirds consumed in the UK).
Who cracked Easter egg packaging – a light bulb moment?
Almost all of us now buy our eggs in “egg cartons”. They are up there with milk bottles, cans of beans and cereal boxes as an example of ingenious packaging of household staples. Despite this, the invention of the modern carton is unclear, with Liverpudlians claiming that a citizen of theirs; Thomas Peter Bethell, in 1906 invented a box with dividers to replace the beds of straw in which eggs had, until then, been transported in. Canadians counter that it was a Canadian newspaper editor Joseph Coyle who invented the first egg carton in 1911 to try and solve arguments over eggs being broken in transport to a hotel he was staying at.
A few of our eggs do come in carton-like packaging. But the “classical” Easter Egg box has a very different genesis – light bulbs. In the early 1950s, William T. Horry, a packaging designer, realised that he could adapt a carton he was using to transport electric light bulbs to package Easter eggs. Cadbury seized upon this idea, using it first on their Roses Easter Eggs as it offered greater protection and also windows that could show the egg inside the box. And the rest is history … with now upwards of 80m eggs being sold in the UK.
Why do we celebrate the Easter Bunny?
On one level, the link between rabbits, spring, fertility and the ‘rebirth’ of Easter is relatively obvious given the way that rabbits are well known for breeding like, well, rabbits. And these ‘kittens’ are often born around Easter time (note: technically, and very confusingly, when baby rabbits are first born they are called kittens, not bunnies).
But the adoption of the Easter Bunny and tradition of gifting eggs is way more convoluted. Hares have long been associated with the Virgin Mary as in Roman times it was (mistakenly) believed that hares were hermaphrodites and so could reproduce without sex. So in mediaeval church paintings and manuscripts hares were often used to symbolise the idea of the virgin birth. And Easter Hares somehow became associated with giving out eggs (another symbol of fertility etc.) to well behaved children in the following few centuries. The first record we have of an Easter Bunny (or to be exact, an Easter Hare) giving out eggs, dates back to 1682 where Georg Franck Von Frackenau describes a German Lutheran folk take of an Easter Hare bringing eggs for well behaved children. German immigrants to the US in the 1700s brought this tradition with them, and there are mentions in Pennsylvania diaries from the 1700s of an egg-laying hare (called the ‘Osterhase’) and children making nests for this hare to lay their anticipated Easter eggs.
The link between Easter bunnies, The White House and riots
In the US, the Easter Bunny has also more recently merged into another Easter and Egg related tradition, the “White House Easter Egg Roll”. Quite when the tradition of rolling eggs at Easter on the White House Lawn is disputed, but according to the White House Historical Association, it may well have been the first lady Dolly Madison who started the tradition in 1810. And there are records of various other US Presidents, and their children, following this tradition (including Abraham Lincoln).
In parallel, children in Washington had started up their own traditions of rolling Easter Eggs all over Washington DC, including in front of Congress. By the 1870s, the tradition had become fairly raucous, with thousands of screaming children taking the day of school to roll eggs, and themselves, all over the lawns and Capitol’s grounds. The US Congress was not amused by the noise and damage passed the Turf Protection Law “to prevent any portion of the Capitol grounds and terraces from being used as play-grounds or otherwise, so far as may be necessary to protect the public property, turf, and grass from destruction and injury.” Less than two weeks after Easter, President Grant signed the measure into law.
Torrential rain washed out all Easter Festivities the following year. In 1878 a number of children (with teachers and parents) tried to roll eggs again on Capitol Hill in front of Congress but they were turned away under the “Turf Protection Law”. However the disappointed children found a warm welcome at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, up at the White House, where President Rutherford Hayes instructed his guards to allow the children to roll eggs on the Whitehouse Lawn. .
This became an annual tradition, and by 1937 crowds of 50,000 people were rolling eggs on the White House lawn to the sound of marching music played by the Band of the US Marine Corps. World War 2, and rationing, placed a temporary hold on this egg rolling until 1953 when Eisenhower reinstated the tradition.
And then in 1969, the Easter Bunny appeared when a member of President Nixon’s wife’s staff dressed up as the Easter Bunny to massive acclaim. Since then successful Presidents have doubled down with new innovations; Jimmy Carter hired a three ring circus, Nancy and Ronald Regan staged an Easter Egg hunt with wooden eggs autographed by Hollywood actors and sports superstars, and today (post covid) tickets are distributed by public lottery.
You are too late for this year’s White House Ballot … but you can still hold your own Easter Egg roll, hunts and festivities.
Sources:
https://www.history.com/news/a-brief-history-of-the-white-house-easter-egg-roll
The White House Announces Date and Ticket Lottery for the 2024 Easter Egg Roll | The White House
