Features

The Egg and I: Reflections on a rite of spring

by Kay Kaufmann

Tobias Wells-Zimmerman leans back comfortably in his mother’s lap, waving a blue plastic egg in one hand and staring fixedly–as 17-month-olds tend to do–at the reporter sitting next to him.

"Egg!" he says.

Tobias and his mom, Diana Wells, are lounging on the grass at Ed Wilhelm Field, in the aftermath of Takoma Park’s annual Spring Egg Hunt, held April 10, where eggs are undoubtedly the main topic of conversation.

On an appropriately mild but overcast day, several dozen kids, toddlers to 8-year-olds, have quickly cleared the field of over 1,000 plastic eggs filled with candy and small toys. The event is more communal than religious, harking back to the muddled historical roots of the tradition, which–as is often the case with secularized holidays such as Easter–hardly anyone here seems to know.

Wells, 38, and her husband, Paul Zimmerman, 37, came this morning, she says, so "Toby can hang out with his pals."

Like several families here, the couple also observes the Jewish holiday of Passover and had been at a seder earlier in the week. They frankly admit they have no idea why people hunt for eggs on Easter.

Carey Dillon of the Takoma Park Recreation Department thinks it has something to do with spring and chickens. Though this is the first egg hunt she’s organized as a city recreation manager, she says, Takoma Park has been sponsoring the nondenominational events for over 20 years.

Planning for the half-hour hunt stretched out over 2 months, Dillon said. She ordered the eggs–about 1500 of them, all pre-filled with toys and candy–and spent about an hour with a team of nine volunteer bunnies, getting the eggs on the field.

The hunt starts at 11 a.m. sharp, and soon after, Dawn Smith is traipsing around the field behind her daughter, Kaya, a sturdy 2-year-old in running mode–more or less oblivious to the eggs, but enjoying herself all the same. Smith, 26, is a recent transplant from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and the egg hunt is her and Kaya’s first community outing.

She says eggs are symbols of fertility and the hunt is rooted in the pagan holidays that predate Easter.

Close enough. Eggs and the bunnies who bring them are, in fact, symbols of fertility that early Christians press-ganged into their celebrations as the holiday evolved out of its pagan and Jewish roots. (The word Easter is derived from the name of a Teutonic fertility goddess, Estere, also known as Astarte.) Since most early Christians were, like Jesus, originally Jewish, they also continued having seders until about the fourth century when the Roman Emperor Constantine, a rabid anti-Semite, established Easter as a separate religious holiday.

Egg hunts followed in the 17th century, first mentioned in a children’s story in Germany.

This spiritual-cultural blur finds its present-day corollary in the multicultural mix of traditions that is very much in evidence at Ed Wilhelm. Standing in the middle of the now-empty field, 7-year-old Rachel Sobey shows her mom, Wendy, the tiny pink plastic box she found in one of her eggs. A budding Buddhist and student at the alternative Family-Oneness School in Chevy Chase, Rachel says her family’s seders are "too long and a little boring," but admits coming to the egg hunt primarily for the candy.

Standing on the sidelines, Tobias’s great aunt, Doreen McDermott, visiting from White Plains, New York, says her Episcopal church has a seder every year on the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday.

Rabbi Michael Feshbach of Temple Shalom in Chevy Chase questions the value of such religious relativism, however trendy or culturally correct.

"Blending symbols," he said in a recent e-mail, "strips each...of its individual power and...context."

At the same time, he said, interfaith seders "can be wonderful opportunities for learning about history and heritage." He’s hosted several, to make sure they’re "done right."

The subtext here seems to be that communal events have a meaning all their own, which is perhaps why they continue, through ongoing permutation, providing connection across time and culture.

It is a mild but overcast spring morning, and people want to be outside and together, which is as good a reason as any for an egg hunt.

Tobias is still staring at the reporter. He gives her his egg for a moment, then takes it back and waves it around some more.

"Egg!" he says.