Every spring passes a wonderful and bright Easter holiday. On this holiday, all mothers and grandmothers, as well as loving wives and their little helpers, paint eggs, cook pies and shanezhki. But why are eggs painted for Easter ? Tradition or absurdity, illogical misunderstanding or Orthodox custom? It is impossible to give an unambiguous answer to all these questions, why eggs are painted for Easter, therefore, but how else? We grew up with this tradition, our grandmothers painted eggs, and the grandmothers of our grandmothers also painted eggs in onion husks every Easter.
But nevertheless, to the question - why eggs are painted on Easter, several answers can be given:
- The first position says that it is connected with one of the enemies of Christianity. In the chicken coop, on the birthday of the future emperor, one chicken laid an egg, which was covered with red dots. This sign was interpreted as the fact that the newborn will have a great future. From that moment on, the tradition of giving an egg painted red appeared throughout Rome. Christianity took this custom and adopted it; the painted eggs in Easter symbolized the blood of Jesus Christ;
- why eggs are painted on Easter, the second answer is because it is connected with the legend associated with the rabbis. Among the feasts at the feast were boiled eggs and fried chicken, one of the rabbis recalled that he had promised to resurrect the Crucified on the third day. But the landlord did not agree with this, saying that most likely the eggs will turn purple and the chicken will come to life. It was by this giving that the eggs began to be painted in various colors, including purple;
- the third position answers the question - why at Easter eggs are simply painted - the Virgin, in order to entertain her son, painted eggs in various colors;
- one of the most common positions - the fourth, tells a different story. The emperor of Rome always had to give presents. Mary Magdalene, having come to the emperor, handed him an egg as a gift, it was simply not possible to acquire another because of poverty. The saint came to the court of Tiberius with one purpose - to conduct sermons about the Risen Christ. When the emperor listened to the Holy One, he did not believe her, and Mary with the words “Christ is Risen” told him that Christ, like a chicken, rose from the tomb. But Tiberius did not believe, and when he saw that the egg had turned bright red before his eyes, he exclaimed, “Truly risen.” From this day people began to paint eggs in a color symbolizing the blood of Christ;
- painting eggs for Easter is a tradition that came from the same Mary Magdalena, but the difference is. That the woman presented the egg as a gift not to Tiberius, but to the procurator of Judea - Pontius Pilate, as the fifth position says. Since that day, painted eggs have become a symbol of Easter.
But there is another legend, many people answer the question - why do they paint eggs on Easter, so that painted eggs are nothing more than a pagan tradition. Slavic people and other pagans on the eve of many pagan holidays on chicken eggs wrote prayers to pagan gods, as well as various magic spells. After that, painted eggs were laid at the feet of idols and dedicated to idols. And therefore, painting eggs is not a Christian tradition at all, but an echo of pagan perception. During Easter, the Christian people and even Jesus himself never used such an attribute. Today, everyone uses this direction, but most people are categorically against it. In a word, there are so many people, there are so many general opinions in the world. According to many beliefs, painting eggs is a humiliation of the person who created this holiday.
As a result, we can say that, despite the opposite opinion about the need to stain eggs, people still believe that this approach is the most correct.