In Austria besides the Easter bunny, Easter eggs are an indelible feature of Easter, Easter traditions and games. In former days it was customary for young couples to give each other colored and decorated eggs as a token of love; today children hunt them on Easter Sunday. Afterwards the eggs are used for a traditional game called ’Eierpecken’ or egg cracking. This old tradition of Eierpecken, which is particularly popular in rural Austria, stems from another custom, the Eiersammeln or egg collecting. In order to collect eggs boys went from house to house and received hard-boiled, dyed eggs from the girls or farmer’s wives. Then the boys played the games of Eierpecken or Eierturtschen. The Eierpecken required some skill and involved a coin which was thrown from a distance at the dyed egg. If the coin hit the egg and was stuck in there, the boy with the coin received the egg, if he failed to hit the egg, the coin was given to the boy with the egg. For the Eierturtschen game it did not take skill, just good luck and a thick eggshell. In this game two eggs were knocked together and the person whose egg did not shatter received the broken egg. Either the eggs’ pointed ends or flat ends were knocked together. Still today adults and children alike enthusiastically play the ’Eierturtschen’ game according to these rules.

The traditional Easter egg that was given as a symbol of Easter in the morning of Easter Sunday was a hard-boiled, red-dyed egg. It symbolizes the tomb of Jesus. The egg is hard as stone, dead, lifeless and cold. And yet it contains life which is expressed by the crimson red color, the color of the blood. The message of a traditional Easter egg is: Jesus rose to life again and is alive! It reminds Christians of the rock tomb from which Christ arose and therefore the red-dyed egg also represents the power of God over death: who cracks the eggshells, similar to the women who had to roll away the rock from Jesus’ tomb, will find life. But why is the egg a symbol of the tomb of Jesus? This has to do with fasting. The 40-day Lent requires Christians to focus on spiritual issues instead of food. During Lent, meat and fat, also dairy products during the Middle ages, were not allowed to be eaten.

Eating eggs was forbidden as well throughout the period of Lent because eggs were regarded as ’liquid’ meat by our ancestors. This, however, caused some problems as during spring hens usually lay a lot of eggs. Refrigerators were not invented then and eggs can only be stored for little time. The solution to that problem was to reduce the number of hens and therefore the number of eggs. Little wonder that during the period preceding Lent, when meat was allowed, a lot of chicken was eaten.