• Eggs were one of the foods forbidden during Lent, the 40-day fasting period of reflection and penitential preparation leading up to Easter.
• In the medieval period, any eggs laid during Lent were boiled for preservation so that when Easter Sunday rolled around, eggs were back on the menu.
• And eggs weren't just used as a food source: a rural practice known as 'pace-egging' was common, where costumed groups roamed villages for eggs then given as gifts to the church as Good Friday offerings and to the lord of the manor.
• Many of these eggs were brightly painted; a practice truly ancient. Red was used to symbolise the blood of Christ, first by early Christians then the Orthodox Church.
• There are suggestions that 16th-century German Protestant reformer Martin Luther organised egg hunts for his congregation.

The term seemingly derives from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, Eostre, who was celebrated as she escaped Winter’s harsh clutches. But Eostre wasn’t quite the pagan deity who, we are commonly told, transformed a bird into an egg-laying hare companion, e.g. the forerunner to th...