Happy Easter!
Happy Easter to all my celebratory Christian readers, and to all those who just enjoy the holiday as well!
One year when my son was little, I spent the week prior to Easter blowing out eggs and dying them. Now that he’s grown and away, the eggs are packed away in boxes and stored in parts unknown. If I could get my hands on them I’d photograph them for you, because even all these years later they are beautiful, with dyes both subtle and unsubtle, interesting etched patterns and rainbow effects—definitely one of my finest crafts hours (to tell the truth, I didn’t have so many fine crafts hours, although there was also a gingerbread house we made that was stored in the attic and alas, eaten by small creatures–and not human ones, at that.)
Blown-out eggs are well worth the trouble, and why? Because they last. And nothing eats them. You only have to make them once, and you’re all set. They are a bit fragile, but not so very.
So here’s my Easter present to you (not that you couldn’t find it yourself): the instructions for blowing eggs:
First, you’ll need to make a tiny pin hole on each end of the egg. A pin works well, or a wooden kitchen skewer or even the tip of a sharp knife. Gently work the tip of the pin/skewer/knife in a circular motion until a tiny hole appears. Repeat on the other side. Then insert the pin or skewer (the knife will be too big here) far enough into the egg to break the yolk. Use your mouth [blow] to expel the contents of the egg.
And here is a more complex–but perhaps better–way, for those obsessive-compulsives among us.
These aren’t mine, but they’ll have to do as substitute:
[NOTE: This is a repost from Easters past. But it still works for me.]
I can recall in my early elementary school days…there has been measurable continental drift since then…coloring an Easter egg and then taking it home and putting it in one of my dresser drawers because it actually looked OK and even then my artistic talent was somewhere below “nil.”
I left it there for quite a while so I could admire it and this probably wouldn’t have caused a problem except that the egg was still raw.
Yeah! My wife has some blown out eggs that a neighbor lady did for her when she was a kid; well over 50 years ago.
Happy Easter to all.
No jello Easter eggs?
Alex: LOL!
Happy Easter to you too, Neo, and to all who post (and lurk) here.
Us to be Christian in Iraq do some egg colouring by boiling eggs with onion dry top shell to gets their unique colour (I don’t know why they just use brown egg instead) also Muslim do same in different religious events.
So it’s so exiting to see the egg used in these events and how people enjoy them.
But any thought how “Blown-out eggs” comes or links to Easter? Any history behind it.
Apologies I should start with Happy Easter to all.
I hope you had a blesséd Easter.
Happy Late Easter to all…
been busy with family…
now anyone want to let us in on why Christians have eggs and seem to be sharing with pagan fertility religious practices?
after all, ask christians and i will bet you that a vast majority are just fine with pagans sharing the holidays they supposedly stole… (or overlayed i would say)
now its interesting that in wiki about the egg custom, they go to some story about mary sharing eggs at christs burial… and something else..
but if you read mary’s page itself you get the story of her and tiberius cesear..
For centuries, it has been the custom of many Christians to share dyed and painted eggs, particularly on Easter Sunday. The eggs represent new life, and Christ bursting forth from the tomb. Among Eastern Orthodox Christians (including Bulgarian, Greek, Lebanese, Macedonian, Russian, Romanian, Serbian and Ukrainian) this sharing is accompanied by the proclamation “Christ is risen!” (in Greek “Christos anesti”) and the response “Truly He is risen!”(in Greek – “Alithos anesti”).
One tradition concerning Mary Magdalene says that following the death and resurrection of Jesus, she used her position to gain an invitation to a banquet given by Emperor Tiberius. When she met him, she held a plain egg in her hand and exclaimed “Christ is risen!” Caesar laughed, and said that Christ rising from the dead was as likely as the egg in her hand turning red while she held it. Before he finished speaking, the egg in her hand turned a bright red, and she continued proclaiming the Gospel to the entire imperial house.[33]
Another version of this story can be found in popular belief, mostly in Greece. It is believed that after the Crucifixion, Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary put a basket full of eggs at the foot of the cross. There, the eggs were painted red by the blood of the Christ. Then, Mary Magdalene brought them to Tiberius Caesar (see above).
and wiki on easter..
While the origin of easter eggs can be explained in the symbolic terms described above, a pious legend among followers of Eastern Christianity says that Mary Magdalene was bringing cooked eggs to share with the other women at the tomb of Jesus, and the eggs in her basket miraculously turned brilliant red when she saw the risen Christ.[4]
A different, but not necessarily conflicting legend concerns Mary Magdalene’s efforts to spread the Gospel. According to this tradition, after the Ascension of Jesus, Mary went to the Emperor of Rome and greeted him with “Christ has risen,” whereupon he pointed to an egg on his table and stated, “Christ has no more risen than that egg is red.” After making this statement it is said the egg immediately turned blood red.
and
The egg is seen by followers of christianity as symbolic of the grave and life renewed or resurrected by breaking out of it. The red symbolizes the blood of Christ redeeming the world and human redemption through the blood shed in the sacrifice of the crucifixion. The egg itself is a symbol of resurrection: while being dormant it contains a new life sealed within it.[citation needed]
For Orthodox Christians, the Easter egg is much more than a celebration of the ending of the fast, it is a declaration of the Resurrection of Jesus. Traditionally, Orthodox Easter eggs are dyed red to represent the blood of Christ, shed on the Cross, and the hard shell of the egg symbolized the sealed Tomb of Christ–the cracking of which symbolized his resurrection from the dead.[citation needed]
In the Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches, Easter eggs are blessed by the priest at the end of the Paschal Vigil, and distributed to the faithful. Each household also brings an Easter basket to church, filled not only with Easter eggs but also with other Paschal foods such as paskha, kulich or Easter breads, and these are blessed by the priest as well.
During Paschaltide, in some traditions the Paschal greeting with the Easter egg is even extended to the deceased. On either the second Monday or Tuesday of Pascha, after a memorial service people bring blessed eggs to the cemetery and bring the joyous paschal greeting, “Christ has risen”, to their beloved departed (see Radonitza).
🙂
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Magdalene
“after all, ask christians and i will bet you that a vast majority are just fine with pagans sharing the holidays they supposedly stole… (or overlayed i would say)”
They were ours to begin with; we just brought them to the party!
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