Monday, April 17, 2006

hard boiled moai

Today's noon newscasts (right before another good episode of "The Beverly Hillbillies") featured some costumed bunnies standing next to the President and First Lady. The furry (or is it plushie?) characters were there for the annual White House Easter Egg Roll, a tradition started by President Rutherford B. Hayes. My family and I used to go to the event in the late '80s and early '90s. Several local celebrities would be on hand to autograph wooden souvenir eggs. We still have some of the eggs from 1990:



I mentioned on Saturday that we would be decorating our Easter eggs that day. We started with two dozen eggs and several coffee mugs filled with dye. If you look closely, you might notice that we used Christmas mugs. We don't drink much coffee at our house. My wife usually decorates at least one egg with a Christian symbol. My son made one with the colors of the Irish flag. I tried coloring a few myself this year. You can see one of mine in the "five o'clock" position on our egg tray. It turned out a drab color, more Easter Island than Easter Sunday.



When it's time to eat the eggs, we crack them by smacking two together, point to point or round end to round end. My wife's family calls this tradition "egg bunting." The losing egg is the one that cracks first. I looked it up on the Internet and found a Swiss tradition called Eiertütschen, but I'm not sure if it's exactly the same thing. One site said egg cracking was a Bulgarian tradition while another said egg knocking was a Cajun tradition. Has anyone ever heard of egg bunting?
AddThis Social Bookmark Button

4 Comments:

Anonymous Becki said...

Frank, Dear I love ya but your egg looks...quite odd. I'm not sure if I like it or not. Oh well, its the thought that counts or something like that right?

4/19/2006  
Anonymous Mary O said...

We used to do egg fights when I was a kid too. I always thought it was an Armenian thing but a friend of mine (who is of German ancestry) said she used to do it too. Maybe it's a 60's - 70's thing? Dunno.....

4/20/2006  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Smacking two eggs together, point to point or round end to round end. What would happen if, God forbid, you mistakenly smacked a point to a round end? :)

4/22/2006  
Anonymous Juliana said...

Frank, I just found your posting as I was researching an egg-cracking game which had been passed down from my Swiss father as "egg dunking". He learned it as a child in the 1920's. I wanted to verify that it was a Swiss custom and not something he and his brothers invented. The game is played as follows: The eggs are hit by opposing players pointy ends together, then round ends together and then, if both eggs are damaged, pointy to round. The losers get to eat their eggs and the champion egg is then challenged by others. Every Easter we would gather around the basket of eggs looking for a winner. Of course, if you had a really good champion, you had to beg an egg of someone else for breakfast!

4/10/2007  

Post a Comment

Links to this post:

Create a Link

<< Home