The Story of the Easter Egg

College is really a wonderful experience. It's more than simply being surrounded by youth, excitement, and the swirl of many ideas. It's also the unexpected encounters with knowledge or information. For us adults, without being consciously aware of it, these kinds of encounters seem to find us with less and lessfrequency. For me, these moments are like shocks of energy that carry me back in time, and remind me of when so much was new and unknown.

The start of class, with the news that we will be watching a video. Up late the night before, working on TTPTCNBF*, I was prepared to fight the nods of sleep deprivation. The orthodox church in communist Romania? Huh?

Until the part where the old woman, via translator, is telling our host about the lovely, Romanov-like Easter eggs she is painting. They really do look remarkable, even on the 30 year old tape. She says that the decoration of Easter eggs is an old Orthodox tradition, based on the story of the death of Jesus. On the cross, Christ was lanced by the Roman centurion. His blood ran down his body and fell to the ground where it spattered a basket of eggs that a bystander had put down to watch the Crucifixion. The bloody eggs were immediately taken as a sign by His followers, and the celebration of the Resurrection calls for the ritual dying eggs to resemble the eggs spattered on Golgotha those many years ago.

Who knew that the Easter Egg Hunt that brings such pleasure to children and their parents is such an important symbol of the Resurrection? Not me.

*The Term Paper That Cannot Be Finished