- A: The Bunny goes back to 1600s Germany, the eggs to 1300s France. The eggs. The earliest reference to the German Easter bunny already mentions it bringing eggs, but eggs were linked to Easter a long time before that. Egg dying is a worldwide phenomenon, but the link to Easter is something much more specific. The references I’ve found go back to 12th century France. A 1925 article, L. Gougaud, ‘Easter eggs’, Irish monthly 53: 184-186 – http://www.jstor.org/stable/20517629 describes them going back further, especially in connection with mediaeval egg blessings. Gougaud assigns the origin of the egg custom to Lenten prohibitions:(edited)
- The true origin of Easter eggs is … the prohibited use of eggs during Lent. Indeed, Adolph Franz, the learned historian in ecclesiastical blessings of the Middle Ages, says that he has never discovered, in the sacramentaries or rituals anterior to the 10th Century, any special form for blessing the eggs.
- The reference to Adolph Franz is a 1909 book, Die kirchlichen Benediktionen im Mittelalter, vol. 1, pp. 589-594 – http://digital.bib-bvb.de/view/bvb_mets/viewer.0.6.5.jsp?folder_id=0&dvs=1697762653944~864&pid=13736536&locale=en&usePid1=true&usePid2=true#0001
- A different kind of reference appears in a bill from Cluny dating to 1270, which is reported as stating (s.v. ‘Ovum’): Decanus dictae domus de Perrona …. percipiebat…. omnia Ova, quae in Ramis Palmarum, die Veneris sancta et die Paschae inibi offeruntur, et insuper ducenta Ova de ovis, quae aliis temporibus sunt oblata. A deacon of the house dedicated at Pérrone … received … all the eggs that were offered there on Palm Sunday, Holy Friday, and the Paschal day; and in addition two hundred eggs that were offered at other times of year.
- Gougaud cites in a letter dating to 1399. Like the one above, it’s cited in Du Cange’s Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis (orig. publ. 1678):
- Lesquelz alerent demander leur potage, que en appelle Eufs de Pasques. … people who would go and ask for their (allotment of) food, called ‘Easter eggs’.