Saturday, March 20, 2010

It's Egg Balancing Time: Welcome Spring!

first of all, i'm not a pagan or a wiccan. i belong to the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints, aka the mormons. i still like celebrating holidays using the old traditions. i just like to know where the traditions come from. many of our Christian holidays and traditions come from paganism and were just given new Christian meanings. i find this sort of stuff fascinating.


here's something that i found on the internet.

Eggs represent new life and new potential, thus they are often used as symbols of Spring festivals. According to folklore, eggs easily balance on their ends during equinox. Eggs are often colored and covered with symbols that represent wisdom, strength, and fertility. Eggs are often given as gifts or charms to children or other loved ones during the festivals
Read more at Suite101: Rituals and Traditions of the Spring Equinox: Pagan Holidays Celebrate the Change of Seasons http://paganismwicca.suite101.com/article.cfm/rituals_and_traditions_of_the_spring_equinox#ixzz0ikA5tfWW

another good site about eggs at the equinox is snopes.com. go there and search "egg balancing". they say that the tradition of balancing eggs started with the chinese. also, you can balance eggs on end at any time of year. the point is that they are a symbol of spring. balancing them is just a fun thing to do.


i always use hardboiled eggs. that way, if they drop, there's no big mess to clean up. i boiled 8 eggs, but only had enough patience to stand up three of them.



emmy ran in the kitchen and made one egg fall. i colored it with some crayons and stood it back up.




as an added bonus you get to see some of my chicken salt and pepper shakers on top of my bread box. how befitting.

7 comments:

Puphigirl said...

Whenever I mention balancing eggs at the vernal or autumnal equinox, people just look at me like, What?" they have never heard of that tradition before.

Ruthykins said...

but you don't do it at the autumnal. eggs are a sign of spring.

greenolive said...

show off.

EmmaP said...

it's too bad you don't have more than one set of salt and pepper shakers. :P

Ruthykins said...

emma, i know. i have to tell people to stop getting me salt and pepper shakers. there's just so many chicken ones out there that are really cute.

Deborah said...

Fertility, eh? Hmmmm....

Anonymous said...

That's really interesting! I've always wondered why we celebrate Easter with eggs.

I can never get hard-boiled eggs to stand up like that, no matter how patient I am.