my egg tree

 

The eggs are in their natural state!  Some of them are bluey-green and the little ones are quail eggs.  

Tim was very disparaging about my insistence that an egg tree is an American tradition of Germanic origin but then he found this
in The Scotsman.  I appreciate that selling pre-made egg trees is a commercial venture but I beg to differ with the sanctimonious folk who remark  "I can't see this catching on" and "This has got  nothing to do with Easter.  It has nothing to do with the resurrection of Christ."

Well.... ACTUALLY, neither has the word EASTER got anything to do with the resurrection of Christ, and my kids are taught in school that we give each other chocolate eggs at Easter because they're SYMBOLIC OF THE STONE COVERING CHRIST'S TOMB.... UH HUH.  Not of fertility or rebirth, then.  Not of the Saxon spring goddess Eastre or whatever her name is, which is presumably where the word Easter comes from.  Not that I disagree with or object to the egg=stone symbolism, it's a neat piece of syncretism, but I never heard it before I came to the UK.  Not even from my minister grandfather or while getting my PhD in Folklore.

so.  Just let me celebrate Easter with my homemade American egg tree which will never catch on, and someone else can go buy the four thousand chocolate eggs full of Lego from Tesco's.

in other religious news, my rather holy but somewhat odd daughter decided we needed to re-enact The Last Supper on Maundy Thursday (we have, in fact, done this before).  It is a lovely, if strange and impromptu ceremony complete with biblical texts, and generated some funny quotations tonight:

"Mummy, I don't want any manna!  I don't like manna!" (Mark)

"Judas son of Simon Escargot" (Sara)

"Mummy, please get your Bible off my bread."

My egg tree is symbolic of three years' worth of bicycling out to the Gloagburn Farm Shop, bringing Mark home from school for a treat at lunch time, chatting with the postmistress up the road at the local post office where they also sell free range eggs, and a visit to a quail farm on our way to see the salmon leaping up the falls at Buchanty Spout.