When they ask about…Easter eggs

With their colourful and shiny veneer and promise of highly sought-after sweetness within, Easter eggs are impossible to avoid for weeks and weeks in the lead-up to Easter.

For Jewish parents they present a challenge beyond the universal and personal one of how much sugar and confectionary marketing we are going to let into our homes and our children’s bodies.

While today’s eggs may be secularised, mass-produced and attractively packaged for supermarket shelves, if we buy them, we are buying into the Christian festival of Easter in some small way.

Is it wrong for a Jewish child (or adult) to eat an Easter egg? I don’t believe so. Unlike some other foods, they are not expressly forbidden. So it’s more about identification and protection of distinctiveness amid a dominant culture. Certainly, if an Easter egg were gifted to us, our teachings about respect and dignity mean we should accept and enjoy it.

Educating our children about other cultures inevitably involves a degree of participation, whether it’s observing a dragon parade on Chinese New Year, getting scattered with Holi colours or eating the occasional Easter egg, perhaps even hunting for it on Easter Sunday. We purportedly live in a secular society but Easter (and Christmas) are public holidays, making them impossible to ignore.

Learning about and openness to other cultures and traditions can actually foster pride in our own, while blanket prohibitions often make the forbidden more alluring.

But we need to be aware of the deep historical and religiously significant origins of contemporary Easter eggs and can use the treat as an educational and identity opportunity.  One explanation for the empty egg’s association with Easter is that it represents Jesus’s empty tomb from where it is believed he was resurrected. Abstinence from eggs (and sweets) forms part of the observance of Lent preceding Easter, so the custom of enjoying them on Easter is a Christian form of “breaking the fast”.