Are You Feeling Egg-centric?

Memories of Easters past always include fond recollections of the annual egg dying experience. We remember watching our mom spreading out yesterday’s newspaper on the kitchen table and getting out the egg dying kit from the grocery store. Today’s kits have fancy add-ons like stickers and such, but we just recall the package of tablets in different colors, the one copper wire egg dipper we took turns with, the wax crayon for writing our names on the eggs we chose, and the box with the punch-out holes for displaying our finished designs.

For many of us it was the first time we inhaled the pungent smell of vinegar as we watched intently for the different colored tablets to dissolve in the cups of hot water. It didn’t take long to discover, once the white hard-boiled eggs had cooled enough to be carefully dipped in the dye, that the blue, green and purple dyes would work their magic first while the orange and yellow dyes took much longer. And red always turned out pink, right?

I’m glad I also have memories of dying Easter eggs with my boys and with several of our grandchildren over the years. Inevitably some child would turn over a cup of dye and it would flow over the newspaper on to the floor, someone would drop an egg and crack it, or a grandchild would complain that a sibling was hogging the best colors, the dipper, or the crayon. But when all was said and done and the mess was cleaned up, we had a beautiful array of colored eggs nestled in fake green grass in a basket—all ready for an Easter morning egg hunt. There might have even been some slightly multi-colored egg salad to enjoy after Easter in the days before we knew about salmonella!

Whereas kids can have just as much fun hunting for plastic eggs as real ones, especially if there’s a piece of candy or other surprise inside each one, much fancier eggs from different cultures have been a part of the art world for centuries and are often displayed under glass in golden egg cups in museums. Whether it’s the delicately painted Ukrainian pysanky egg or the jewel-encrusted Faberge one, they are truly works of art.

The eggs displayed on my coffee table each Easter are the multi-colored marble ones I collected on travels in Germany and Italy in the early seventies. But I’m thinking this year I may just toss one of those egg dying kits in my grocery basket and have an egg-stravagant dying experience again. While I’m waiting for the fizzy tablets to reach their potential, I’ll turn in my Bible to Isaiah 43:19 and be reminded of God’s promise: See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? For the symbolism of the Easter egg, of any variety, should not be missed even by the youngest of us. New life, new birth, the promise of spring and of resurrection. That’s Easter in an egg shell. So add some egg-centric fun to your celebration this year as you focus on the real reason we rejoice–the resurrection of our living Savior. Happy Easter!