Tradition

Coloring eggs this year was different.  No one splatted an egg.  None of the eggs became the dreadful gray color that results from soaking it in every dye bath on the table over and over.  No one cried.  Everything was pleasant and catastrophe free.  What does this mean?   I no longer have children under age three.  While I watched my children and a friend color eggs I thought about time’s passage and traditions. 

The Collins World English Dictionary entry offered at dictionary.com gave the following non-religion specific meanings.

1.  the handing down from generation to generation of the same customs, beliefs, etc.
2.  the body of customs, thoughts, practices, etc. belonging to a particular country, people, family, or institution over a relatively long period
3.  a specific custom or practice of long standing    

I enjoy the colorful dunking of eggs.  I remember my own childhood in its vinegar smell and subsequent eggs salad sandwiches.  It is a practice I’m passing from generation to generation.  But this year I questioned, “Why?” 

Curious, I looked into the egg tradition.  An excerpt from religioustolerance.org offered lore from Ancient Saxons.  “Eostre was the Saxon version of the Germanic lunar goddess Ostara.   Her feast was on the full moon following vernal equinox -- almost identical calculation as for Christian Easter in the west.   One legend associated with Eostre was that she found an injured bird on the ground one winter.   To save its life, she transformed it into a hare.   But ‘the transformation was not a complete one.   The bird took the appearance of a hare but retained the ability to lay eggs . . . the hare would decorate these eggs and leave them as gifts to Eostre.’ ” 

MSN.com offered different possibilities for eggs’ association with Easter stating “eggs have long been associated with birth and fertility.   Their abundance at Easter symbolizes the renewal of both a religious savior and the natural world.   In addition, several Christian sects used to forbid (and some still do) eating eggs during Lent.   After spending over a month egg-free, observers celebrated by eating the no-longer-forbidden food.”

In all my years of Easter eggs neither explanation had ever been presented.  Dyeing and hunting eggs at Easter is just something we do.  How is it that some traditions – like Easter eggs – span so very many generations.  (Isn’t it interesting what actions become traditions?  Makes me wonder what things fell by the way side.)  Does knowing where this tradition may have come from change it for me?  More importantly for me the tradition is the cement that holds memories together, bonds the family of me as a child to the family of myself as a parent.  Perhaps this annual activity will offer my kids the same connection should they continue to color Easter eggs in their adulthood.  I feel somewhere in repetition of things our predecessors did over a long period of time we find our own way.