Easter egg
For the hidden and often humorous features included in computer programs, DVDs, books, CDs, etc., see Easter egg (virtual).
Easter eggs are specially decorated eggs given out to celebrate
the Easter holiday. The oldest tradition is to use dyed and painted chickens eggs, but
the general modern custom is to substitute eggs made from chocolate. Easter eggs
can be any form of confectionery such as hollow chocolate eggs wrapped in brightly-colored foil. Some are delicately constructed of spun sugar and pastry
decoration techniques. The ubiquitous jelly egg (or jelly bean) is made from
sugar-coated pectin candy. These are often hidden, supposedly by the Easter
Bunny, for children to find on Easter morning.
Decorated eggs are much older than Easter, and both eggs and rabbits are age-old
fertility symbols. The
Passover Seder service uses a hard-cooked
egg flavored with salt water as a symbol both of new life and the Temple service in Jerusalem. The Jewish tradition may have come from earlier Roman Spring feasts.
Easter egg origin stories abound -- one has an emperor claiming that the Resurrection was as likely as eggs turning red (see Mary
Magdalene); more prosaically the Easter egg tradition may have celebrated the end of the privations of Lent. Long ago, some cultures considered eggs as meat, which would have been forbidden during Lent. One would have been forced to hard boil the eggs that the chickens produced so as not to
waste food, and for this reason the Spanish dish hornazo (traditionally eaten in and around Easter) contains hard-boiled
eggs as a primary ingredient.
Easter eggs are a widely popular symbol of new life in Poland and other Slavic countries' folk traditions. A batik-like
decorating process known as Pisanka produces intricate, brilliantly-colored eggs. The
celebrated Fabergé workshops created exquisite jewelled Easter eggs for the
Russian Imperial Court.
There are many other decoration techniques and numerous traditions of giving them as a token of friendship, love or good
wishes. A tradition exists in some parts of Britain of rolling painted eggs down steep hills on Easter Sunday. When boiling
hard-cooked eggs for easter a nice colour can be achieved by boiling the eggs with onion skin.
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In programming, Easter eggs are sections of code that are intentionally hidden by the programmer to be found by a user who is
aware of some inside joke that the code describes. Easter eggs are also put into movies, TV, DVD features, music, and art. For
instance, the pod from 2001: A Space Odyssey and one of
the robots from Terminator can be seen in Watto's junkyard in Star Wars, Episode I: The Phantom Menace. References to the book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the
game Zero Wing are also very popular (look up the number 42 in the Google
calculator).
See also: Egg decorating
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