Why do we gift eggs at Easter? Easter egg history, first chocolate egg and what they represent

Chocolate eggs have long been an Easter tradition. | Canva/Getty Images

It’s Easter and that means (since around Boxing Day) supermarket shelves have been lined with brightly-coloured chocolate eggs.

It’s long been part of the holidays to exchange the oval confectionary, but why do we do it?

Here’s everything you need to know,

Where does the tradition of Easter Eggs come from?

Before we had chocolate Easter eggs we simply exchanged normal chicken eggs - in pre-Christian times they were given in Spring to symbolise new life.

This Pagan tradition was adopted first adopted by early Christians in Mesopotamia (now modern day Iraq), before spreading into Europe from east to west, by turns through the Orthodoxm Catholic and Protestant churches.

It became particularly popular because it was forbidden to eat eggs during Lent, meaning by Easter many Christians were craving the food item.

It was also a tradition to paint the eggs - something we still do today - and particularly with red paint to symbolise the blood of Christ.

When were chocolate Easter eggs invented?

The first recorded creation of chocolate eggs was in the opulent French court of Louis XIV in Versailles, while the first commercially-available examples were in a shop in the Italian city of Turin in 1725, here empty chicken eggs were filled with molten chocolate.

The modern Easter egg was created in 1873 by British confectioners J.S. Fry & Sons who produced the first hollow chocolate egg. The design was then perfected by Cadbury in 1875 who developed a special cocoa butter that could easily be moulded into smooth shapes.

What do Easter eggs represent?

Easter eggs represent a number of things, other than their original Pagan representation of Spring and new life.

Some symbolically link the breaking open of hollow Easter eggs with the empty tomb of Jesus following the resurrection.

Others see the eggs as being a representation of the boulder that was rolled away by an angel from the entrance to Jesus’ tomb.

But the most likely original meaning of the egg was that the trifecta of shell, albumen and yolk reflect the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost.