The Presidential Library’s rare publications spotlight the origin of Easter eggsммммм

On April 24, 2022 the entire Orthodox world will celebrate Easter, the most important and solemn religious holiday. The Presidential Library’s portal shows readers numerous rare materials that are dedicated to Christ's Resurrection and the church traditions of this holiday. For example, Easter eggs.

“The feast of Christ's Resurrection is called Easter (from the Hebrew pesach, which means to pass by), after the name of the Old Testament holiday established to commemorate the deliverance of the Jews from Egyptian slavery. In accordance with the event of Christ's Resurrection commemorated on this holiday, the name Easter in the Christian Church received a special meaning and began to denote the passage from death to life, from earth to heaven”, - says the history of the origin of the name of the holiday in the 1910 edition of Holy Week: (Holy Monday, Holy Tuesday, Holy Wednesday, Holy Thursday, Holy Friday, Holy Saturday) and Easter.

The books available on the Presidential Library’s portal marking the Easter festivities spotlight the history of the emergence of some obligatory traditions. Thus, in the 1892 edition of The Twelfth Feasts of the Orthodox Church or the Flower Garden of the Church Garden, the Easter custom of exchanging colored eggs contains the following explanation: “Mary Magdalene went to Rome to announce the resurrection of the Lord Jesus to Tiberius Caesar and, as a sign of her joy, gave him a red egg ... It can be thought that Mary Equal to the Apostles expressed her faith in the resurrection of the dead with this gift: everyone knows that a beautiful living chick hatches from an egg; so, in due time, our body will also rise from the tomb and live forever with the soul with which it lived on earth. And the red egg reminds us of the precious blood of the Lord Jesus, which he shed on the cross for us sinners”.

Here it is worth mentioning the rare edition of 1826 "On the beginning of the habit of eating red eggs during Easter", presented in the Presidential Library's collections. This is not just a study, but a real investigation, where the author tries to answer the following questions: “1) Was Saint Magdalene really in Rome? 2) If she was, did she present a red egg to the Emperor? 3) If she brought it, then why the egg and why is it red, and what did the Equal-to-the-Apostles Wife want to show us with this offering? The positive resolution of these questions will establish the truth of the tradition. What was the result of this study can be found in the reading room of the Presidential Library in St. Petersburg, as well as in remote reading rooms of the library located in all regions of Russia.

Two legends about the origin of Easter eggs are given at once in the March issue of the illustrated magazine for family reading Niva, which was published in 1912 and was completely dedicated to the feast of Christ's Resurrection.

One of them reads: “Jesus Christ, as a child, loved hens, willingly played with them and fed them. And the Mother of God, in order to please Him, painted chicken eggs and gave them to Him as toys. When the trial of Christ began, the Mother of God went to Pilate and, in order to propitiate him, brought him eggs painted with the greatest art as a gift. She put them in her apron, and when she prostrated herself before Pilate, begging for the Son, the eggs rolled out of the apron and rolled all over the world ... Since then, they have served for us as a remembrance of the sufferings of Christ and His resurrection that followed”.

According to another legend, drops of the blood of the crucified Jesus Christ, having fallen to the ground, took the form of hen’s eggs and became hard as a stone: “Hot tears of the Mother of God, sobbing at the foot of the Cross, fell on these blood-red eggs and left marks on them in the form beautiful patterns and colored dots. When Christ was taken down from the Cross and laid in the tomb, the believers collected His tears and divided them among themselves. And when the joyful news of the Resurrection spread among them, they greeted each other: “Christ has risen”, and at the same time they passed the tears of Christ from hand to hand. The publication notes that this custom was strictly observed by the first Christians, and the sign of the greatest miracle - tears-eggs - were strictly kept and served as the subject of a joyful gift on the day of the Holy Resurrection.

The Presidential Library’s collections contain many interesting materials that spotlight the Easter holiday, its history, traditions and legends associated with it. These are not only rare editions of the 19th - early 20th centuries but also digitized colorful postcards from different countries, rare stock footage dedicated to the celebration of Christ's Resurrection and others.