The Joy of Eggs

Happy Easter my lovely readership, and hopefully you are just plunging yourself into a sizable hillock of chocolate in celebration of Jesus being not dead anymore.  Thinking about it, Jesus and chocolate are a bit of a tenuous link.  When I asked Lily-Rose (7 year old supermodel) why we have chocolate for Easter, she said it was because it was Jesus' favourite.  She's probably not wrong.  Anyway, turns out the Victorians and Edwardians weren't ones to shy away from a tenuous and often down-right weird Easter greeting and here is a selection for your enjoyment...

I think I'll start with the least strange of my collection, which should give you a clue as to what's to come.  The Easter week begins with Palm Sunday, and Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.  Now imagine that scene with rabbits and a donkey made out of Easter eggs and a tail of pussy willow.  Nothing says 'Easter' like a donkey made of eggs...

While we're talking about inappropriate use of eggs, they really shouldn't be used as wheels.  I love the little message written on the front egg - 'May Easter bring thee many Joys!'  Well, frankly, rather than 'many Joys' I think the first time he moves those pedals that child will walk with a limp for the rest of his life.  Really, what parent thinks that ovoid wheel are appropriate for a bike, unless they want to teach the child about suffering and hard work...

Moving on to inappropriate things to come out of eggs, think how scarring it would be to find this on the breakfast table.  Mind you, when buying your half dozen eggs, I'd be suspicious of the one huge, baby-sized egg in the box.  Unless of course I had bought the 'mixed size' ones from Sainsburys because they are a bit cheaper so I think you run the risk of something like a baby being inside...

I might be tempted to take them back to the shop if three singing working girls came out of my egg.  If the Woolson Spice Company ever send you an Easter gift it would be wise to treat it with caution.  At any moment it might break open and you'd have three more mouths to feed.  No wonder this one has been abandoned in the wild.  So sad.

Moving on from eggs to chicks, here are a couple of frankly odd cards.  Here we see a traumatised young chick being terrified by the clown chick of Easter.  I'm not just one of those people who says that clowns are scary for no reason.  I once got road raged by a children's entertainer in full clown make-up.  That sort of things stays with you longer than Tim Curry as Pennywise in It.

This one is titled 'Got Me a Hat, Chicks Dig Hats' and I think that the young fluffy chick looks far happier by being greeted by the Shaft of Easter Chicks, than by scary clown chick.  It occurs to me that the Easter-Tiding chicks are massive in proportion to their 'victims', rather like the sheep at the back of The Pretty Baa Lambs...

Surely that 'lamb' at the back is just a chap in a lamb costume?

Talking of lambs, obviously little baby sheeplings are another common symbol of Easter, all gambling in meadows and being not creepy at all...

Surely this is some sort of scene of devil worship? Nothing says Easter like the long-tailed devil lambs dancing outside their egg house as their ruler plays his clarinet of doom... Okay, I'm probably over-reacting, after all we all know who is the High Priest of Scary Easter symbolism...

Nothing says Easter like a rabbit with an egg for a body...

Rabbits are not an animal that I naturally associate with evil, but some of the Easter cards have the most disconcerting if not downright disturbing images involving Mr Bunny and his family, the above genetic mutation being one of them.  Again, I'm guessing the discussion went 'Easter means eggs and bunnies, so what could be more Easter-y than bunny eggs!'  Say no to Animal Testing, my friends.

Mrs Bunny doesn't look too happy about the amorous advances of Mr Bunny.  Again, apart from the fact that they are stood in an egg (why?) and they are bunnies, I'm not sure what this has to do with Easter, unless the 'Easter Greeting' they want you to have is slightly awkward and a little threatening.

Talking of 'threatening', these are the most disturbing pair I have ever seen.  They belong to a notorious Easter gang who will corner you in an alley and steal all your possessions.  I named the file of this picture 'Mr and Mrs Bunny will rob you blind'.  They remind me of the more chilling parts of Watership Down.  Especially Mrs Bunny.  She looks like she's hiding something vicious under her mopcap.

If you were in any doubt who rules Easter, take a look at this little slice of wrong.  The Easter Bunny Overlord will ride into town on his Goat (since when are goats involved in Easter?! It's a sign I tell you, a sign!) with his little chick captives, to enforce some Easter Joy.  Frankly, I'm too scared to say no.

Fear not, the chicks have an escape plan.  We can all flee in the Zeppelin of Eastertide (no, it isn't steampunk) and be free of these strange and disturbing images which would probably puzzle Jesus as he tucked into his chocolate eggs on Easter morning (that's the proper breakfast for the newly-risen Saviour.  I wouldn't be offering him toast, he's just risen from the dead for goodness sake.  Get some cake out!)  I find it odd that the Victorians, so very overtly religious, managed to make their Easter cards so very secular and pagan.  After all, this is Easter, it's not obscure in terms of imagery...

Mind you, I suppose the overwhelming Easter image in Christian iconography is Jesus on the cross, dying, which isn't the most chipper and fluffy of images to shove on the front of a pastel coloured card.  Also Jesus being alive, like the image above, is difficult to make specific to Easter unless you show Mary being surprised in the garden.  Coupled with this may be the suspicion that any dwelling on the Christian imagery is dangerously near Popery (down with that sort of thing!) and you are far safer with chicks.  I suppose once you start moving into random elements of spring then any combination is possible and you are bound to start creeping into the surreal.  Mind you, it's not like they showed laughing children blowing each other up with a mortar loaded with eggs!  Oh....

Happy Easter!  I'll return on Friday as I am away this week looking after my Dad who is having an operation.  Remember to have your entries in to my competition to guess who I have knitted by 7.10am BST on Thursday 4th April when I am 40 years old.  40...sigh...I need to eat some chocolate...

See you on Friday!