Around 2,500 years ago, people in Persia painted eggs called Nowruz to celebrate their New Year. Even today, Persian families still color eggs for springtime festivities starting on the vernal equinox.

 

Christians started painting eggs a long time ago, probably in the Middle Ages, around the 13th century. In 1290, England's King Edward I ordered 450 eggs to be colored or covered with fancy gold leaf as gifts for royal relatives.

Eggs were an excellent choice for decorating because they were cheap, and their symbolism worked well with the story of Christ's resurrection. The tradition spread quickly.

 

The Eastern Orthodox Christians were among the first to color eggs, usually in symbolic red. In Germany, people started painting eggs green the day before Good Friday and hanging them on trees.

 

Our mass-market egg-dying kits resemble those developed in the late 1800s. A New Jersey drugstore owner created Paas dye tablets that could be mixed with water and vinegar, and we still use similar kits today.

If you've been to a modern Easter egg hunt, you know it can get competitive. But in history, egg hunts were very serious, a matter of life or death. Tribes hunted them for food, and the most colorful ones were given to children. 

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Not until the late 19th century did eggs transform into treats for children, courtesy of the Victorians who cherished age-old traditions. (We owe Christmas trees to the Victorians as well!) Their passion for historical fun played a pivotal role in modernizing the practice of dyeing Easter eggs. Following this trend, Easter-egg hunts emerged, with the White House joining the festivities by hosting the inaugural Easter Egg Roll in 1878.

 

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