You do WHAT with your eggs?! Lithuanians and Easter ✨
What came first - the chocolate or the chick? 🐣
✨ Hey you! ✨
Thanks for reading!
Happy Easter, if you celebrate it, and, if you celebrate it today! 🌿✨
🇱🇹If there was a box out there, with a label “typical Lithuanian” on it, I would not quite fit into it. Yet being Lithuanian is a huge part of my identity, and so this Easter Sunday gave me a lovely excuse to go back and review my roots.
When I was at school, they told us Lithuania is over 90% Christian, but these days it all seems a lot more complex - the youth follow the old traditions, but do they still consider themselves Christian? 🤔 When it comes to Christmas or Easter celebrations in Lithuania, I see a huge influence of Christianity, but also a lot of nature worshipping there too, and that’s not surprising, since Lithuanians were the last pagans in Europe (we always had the fighter spirit!).
🫂 In preparation for this post, I asked a few Lithuanian friends how they celebrate Easter, and although there was some overlap in general, there were also a few answers that surprised me! So here’s me this week. Reviewing some lovely Lithuanian customs that happen over Easter. I drop the religion for this post, and concentrate on the culture, the society and the family. 🧑🎤
🧭 Customs can vary even within a small geographical territory, and so my perspective does not represent the whole of Lithuania’s. Fellow Lithuanians, feel free to add and share YOUR stories in the comments! I’m as curious as everyone else!
⭐️ And for anyone who’s not enjoying the egg chat: scroll down for sonnets about bonnets. ⭐️
The eggs!
🍭A modern child of the West might associate Easter with chocolate: the bunnies, the chickens, all the eggs. But for a Lithuanian child, it’s still somewhat of a mix. Chances are, their parents grew up surrounded by something a little different. They used to get very excited about the boiled eggs.
What do we do to the eggs?
🤯 Boil them, then decorate them. Then admire them. Then smash them. Or exchange them. Or keep them as souvenirs. Let’s talk one step at a time though.
The boiling stage
Hard boil. You probably know how it’s done (I hope you do!), so let’s onto the next.
The decoration stage
🧑🎨It’s all about creativity. Make the eggs beautiful. Make them colourful. Make them look unique. And no one’s expected to be good at it. Whole families sit down the night before Easter to do this together. It’s an exciting process, enjoyed by both kids and adults, and there are many different ways to decorate. Here’s a few widely used.
Store-bought food colouring. Boil eggs, immerse them into containers of liquid dye, take out after a few minutes and… well that’s pretty much it. Some buy special Easter egg stickers. This option is for the busy, or for those, who feel the pressure to have colourful eggs on their tables, but don’t get excited about the creative side of it.
Crayons. Use colourful crayons to draw on warm eggs. I loved this one as a kid.
Onion peel et al. Cover eggs in layers of onion peel, add some small bits of nature to make ornaments, wrap them up tight, and boil. Unwrap and admire the uniqueness of each egg! Here’s a video that shows the process and the result:
And here’s me trying it out yesterday (a lot of fun!).
Beeswax, or dye & beeswax. This one’s proper artsy, and a lot more effort, but delivers amazing results. Boil eggs beforehand. Add ornaments using warm wax and a “needle”, then choose your egg colouring method, e.g. onion peel. As a last step - take the wax off. Admire the patterns. For extra special shine, smudge with a bit of oil or lard. Here’s an example:
As you can sense already - there are many creative and fun ways to make one’s eggs all pretty, and no wonder it brings the people together and gets them all excited. But let’s onto next. 😃
🎶 Under the spot, under the spot
I got a million ways to get it (uh-huh, geah)
Choose one (choose one, hey)
Ay, bring it back, bring it back (uh-huh)
Now double your money and make a stack
I'm on to the next one, on to the next one
I'm on to the next one, on to the next one 🎶
Sorry. Where was I. Oh. Right.
The admiration 😍
So what happens to the eggs when they’re all nice and colourful? 🌈 Well of course, they become the star ⭐️ of the breakfast/lunch/dinner table! Lithuanians admire the eggs, play games that involve the eggs, eat some eggs, but they also exchange the eggs with others. Family gatherings are massive on Easter and people take their “best eggs” and give them to others as presents (and they’re given some as guests).
By the end of the celebration, you’d usually have a mixture of eggs on your table: yours, and the collected. (How lovely! Not only you’ve been creating beauty, but you’re also spreading it and sharing it. The sense of joy all around!) ✨🤍
The eating and the games 🏀
The tapping. Some of the eggs get eaten, and there are a few lovely rituals around how it’s done. We used to play a little game at a breakfast table, where one picks a painted egg from the basket (aiming to pick the strongest one, of course) and taps it into the top of the egg of the opponent. Whoever loses (their egg cracks/smashes) - has to eat the broken egg. This little game happens throughout Easter, both at home, and visiting others, and it brings many smiles.
The roll and smash. Some painted eggs get to live a wild life for a bit, as they’re used for a game of egg rolling. You probably know how this one goes. Roll your egg down the hill (or down a rounded tree bark, or something similar home-made) and claim any eggs you’ve hit. Collect all the eggs. Become the egg queen/king. Muahahaha. Okay, sorry, I got power hungry. Onto next (don’t worry I won’t sing anymore Jay-Z). Or will I….
📻 You still here? Because it’s time for…
The EXTREME admiration 😱🤩
One of my friends said that nowadays their eggs get so pretty, they end up not eating or smashing any at all - just dividing between family members as souvenirs. This brought me some memories from my childhood of my grandad keeping some eggs… for years. He used to have some of these beauties in the cabinet, on display, and some were many years old. Which now looking back on it… that’s odd. But they were pretty, I remember! Like, really! But I mostly remember hearing all the advice to make sure these eggs never get cracked, because the smell would linger in the flat for years… alongside all the beauty. I now wonder how old are the eggs in the etno museums in Lithuania, and what would happen if someone would create an evil plan to smash them… I bet staff there already have some stories to tell…
The modern take 🐰🎄
Decorating an egg tree. This was suggested to me by a young mum, and her kids love it. Can some Lithuanians tell me if it’s something old, or a new tradition as I’ve never come across it? It sounds fun nevertheless. Decorating an egg tree. Thankfully, not with real eggs, but with colourful fake ones. We’re not that crazy. I hope. Actually, no, I want to see trees decorated with real eggs. The older the better. Add the cat into the picture. Hashtag evil laugh.
The egg hunt. As demonstrated by this lovely outtake from Steel Magnolias. P.s.: anyone’s feeling uncomfortable?
The quirky little spin
Ok, so I never heard of this one before, but I loved the story! When my friend was young, her parents, sorry, ahem, Velykė (as in, Easter Lady, or Easter Grandma - a female/spring version of Santa) used to leave Easter eggs at their pillow during their sleep! My friend said the kids would get really excited finding the treasure in the morning, but sometimes… turning in their sleep… they’d accidentally… smash the eggs. I hope they were freshly boiled and not the ones we had in the cabinet…
The end, almost 🎞
I hope you enjoyed me pondering about Lithuanian Easter traditions! I loved hearing my friends share their stories, and revisiting some fun moments from my own childhood too. I forgot how lovely Easter can be, really. The spring outside bringing people together to celebrate, inviting them to be closer to nature, to get refreshed, and excited, with it. It has so much more potential to be celebratory than Christmas! From the stories shared with me - I got this lovely sense of joy, created by ritual and people coming together to celebrate and spend time together in a unique way.
Nature. Family. Community. All the fun. Laimingų Velykų, brangieji!
P.S. 🥚🎞🎞🥚🎞🥚
This week, for an egg on top 🍒 (see what I did there?) - I leave you with a lovely Easter-related movie moment. Nothing to do with Lithuanians. Everything to do musicals.
Your eggs are so pretty! Thank you for this trip. Laimingų Velykų, Aisté!
They are really pretty, little works of art! My Irish relatives did something similar; we gathered the yellow petals from broom (also called whins, furze, and various other names) from the hillsides and used them to colour boiled eggs a lovely shade of primrose. Lovely to hear of it going on elsewhere.