The Easter Egg: A Flourishing Tradition in Pennsylvania

Three views of an 1890 egg depicting a house, a barn and livestock inscribed for Susanna Schultz, a member of the Schwenkfelder community in the Upper Perkiomen Valley.
Eggs, Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center, Pennsburg, PA / Photo by Patrick J. Donmoyer

The hen cackled in the early morning light as the door of the chicken coup opened and the boy walked in with his basket. He had risen before dawn to help with the farmwork as usual. But on this most suspicious of days, Karfreidaag, or Good Friday, gathering the eggs was no mere ordinary task. As on all other mornings, the boy deftly reached under the clucking hens, soothing the birds with a few calm words, while he quickly filled his wire basket. Washing the eggs carefully by the outdoor pump, he returned to the farmhouse kitchen where he meticulously arranged them on the perforated flat to dry. With a pencil he put an X on each of the glistening domes retrieved that morning to differentiate them from the previous day’s eggs. Today’s eggs were to be saved for the omelet served each year as a blessing on Easter morning.

The boy selected one of the marked eggs and inspected it for defects. He gently wrote “1952” on the egg and walked up two flights of stairs to the attic landing. There, on a shelf by the eaves among apple butter crocks and behind a curtain of hanging braids of garlic, an old cheesebox sat on the sill just under the rafters. He carefully opened the sliding lid and reached inside. He took out an egg labeled “1951” and carefully replaced it with the one he had marked “1952.” This new Karfreidaagsoi (Good Friday Egg) would remain hidden throughout the year as a blessing to the home and farm.

The Lehigh County informant who annually observed this Pennsylvania Dutch folk ritual of Eastertide since the time of his childhood recently explained to me that he only stopped this tradition late in life, when he no longer kept chickens on his farm.

Easter eggs are a ubiquitous American tradition, associated with the Christian Paschal Feast and a central part of the more secular celebration of spring and new life. Although numerous ethnic groups practice culturally specific traditions of decorating, blessing and eating eggs as part of their seasonal observations, Pennsylvania was the New World point of origin for the entry of the Easter egg tradition into North America.

In the 18th century, German-speaking immigrants were among the first to establish a robust Easter egg tradition in Pennsylvania, but later waves of 19th-century emigrants from Central Europe and Eastern Europe brought their own unique Easter egg expressions to urban centers, such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and to the Coal Region of northeastern Pennsylvania. This transatlantic immigration gave rise to the popular traditions that many Americans hold dear — the Easter Rabbit, egg hunts, Easter baskets — all of which bring together both sacred and secular elements into the celebration of the holiday. For more than three centuries, these traditions have continued to flourish and diversify throughout Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Dutch Easter Egg

By the dawn of the American Revolution, 81,000 emigrants from German-speaking regions of Central Europe had made their homes in Pennsylvania before spreading throughout North America. Their distinctive language, customs and seasonal traditions both contributed to and were shaped by the blossoming of a new American identity. Nowhere is this more visible today than in the widespread observation of holiday customs that have become omnipresent in the popular culture of the United States, especially the Easter egg.

A spread of eggs by the Pennsylvania Dutch folk artist, poet and musician Peter V. Fritsch (1945–2015), showing a wide range of painted, scratched and dyed expressions.
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

Although many Anglo-American traditions are echoes of early America’s British colonial past, comparatively few of our quintessentially American holiday expressions throughout the year proceed from the British Isles. Central European expressions such as the Easter Rabbit and Easter egg hunts, though popular today, were once foreign, unfashionable or too secular for the tastes of the Quakers, Puritans, Presbyterians and some sectarian communities in Pennsylvania and throughout North America. Nevertheless, these traditions found their way into all corners of the continent, setting the stage for a new American expression of holiday traditions that would grow and change over many generations.

As a predominantly Protestant culture, the Pennsylvania Dutch were deliberately far less liturgical than their communities of origin in Europe, where the history of centuries of Roman Catholic preeminence continued to flavor the folk culture, even in regions under Protestant control. Easter eggs therefore made no official appearance in early Pennsylvania churches but were relegated to the home, where eggs were dyed, scratched to produce elaborate designs, and given as gifts among friends and family on Easter Sunday.

Although roughly 1 percent of the Pennsylvania Dutch were Roman Catholic, it is uncertain whether eggs were ever brought into the sanctuaries of early Catholic Churches in Pennsylvania as tradition would have dictated in Europe. The Catholic liturgy of the Roman Ritual includes special provisions for the blessing of elements of the Easter meal, where eggs, bread and salt were sprinkled with holy water and received a special dedication: “Lord let the grace of your blessing + come upon these eggs, that they be healthful food for your faithful who eat them in thanksgiving for the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you forever and ever, Amen.”

An original 20th-century Good Friday egg used for blessing and ritual healing in Schuylkill County near the village of New Ringgold.
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University (Gift of Carl and Minerva Arner)

Originally intended to bless food for actual consumption, small samples of such consecrated eggs, salt and bread were kept long after Easter in households across Europe, where the blessings were believed to extend throughout the year. Some of these eggs were inscribed or decorated to enhance their potency as sacred objects.

Such European Catholic traditions provide insight into New World customs among the Protestant communities in Pennsylvania, where samples of food and other objects are employed during the season of Lent and Holy Week for well-established folk-cultural expressions of blessing the home and promoting well-being for humans, animals and cultivated plants. In the beginning of the Lenten season, on Ash Wednesday, not only were ashes applied to the foreheads of the faithful in church, but they were also dusted on cattle, gardens, and even the perimeter of homes to drive away parasites, pests and snakes. Fat left over from frying Fasnacht donuts on Shrove Tuesday was used to anoint garden tools and plows in preparation for the agricultural year to protect the soil from pests. On Holy Week at the conclusion of Lent, wild greens such as dandelions were gathered on Maundy Thursday for eating to impart the blessings of Grienerdunnerschtag (Green Thursday), which commemorated the Holy Supper, when bitter greens were eaten by Christ and his disciples as part of the Jewish observation of Passover. Eating greens on this day was believed to prevent lethargy and illness in early spring.

Good Friday was the most important of these Lenten days, upon which no work of any kind was to be done, except for the necessities in caring for livestock. Instead, the Pennsylvania Dutch kept busy with a wide range of holiday observances and rituals. If it was rainy on Good Friday, rainwater was collected for holy water and used to prevent illness and even for the baptism of children in certain parts of Berks County. If the day was clear, dew collected in dishes or on bread would also suffice for curative practices. Eggs laid on Good Friday were believed to be intrinsically holy and were set aside to be eaten for breakfast on Easter morning to prevent illness.

In this circa 1915 photograph by H. Winslow Fegley, a Pennsylvania Dutch woman of the Perkiomen Valley peels onion skins for dyeing eggs.
Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center, Pennsburg, PA

Some of these Good Friday eggs were saved for healing and protective traditions. On many local farms, an egg consecrated by virtue of this special day was hidden in a container in the attic to protect the house from lightning storms, fire and illness. Such an egg also could be employed to relieve a hernia or to reduce a fever. Several contacts from the border of Berks and Lehigh counties not only recalled this practice but can point to jars of Good Friday water and rows of delicate Good Friday eggs saved after decades of this annual practice.

While most Good Friday eggs were kept perfectly white and only inscribed with the year, some were also dyed along with ordinary eggs on Holy Saturday in preparation for Easter the following day. These colorful, decorated eggs generally fell into two categories: those that were eaten and those featuring a wide range of decorative motifs that were presented as gifts. Both classes of eggs began with hard-boiling in natural dyes.

Among the Pennsylvania Dutch, like their relatives in Old Europe, the most common way to dye eggs was to hardboil them in onion skins and vinegar to produce a limited range of colors from orange to deep red or brown depending on the concentration of the dye and whether the hens laid white or brown eggs. This palette of reds was popular not only because of the availability of onion skins but also for its association with the blood of the crucified Christ shed on Good Friday.

The eggs are dropped into boiling water with the onion skins for dyeing in this photo by H. Winslow Fegley, circa 1915.
Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center, Pennsburg, PA

Other colors were historically produced from black walnut hulls or oak bark for shades of deep brown to black; hickory bark for yellow; red cabbage, which if allowed to oxidize, formed a deep green; reconstituted juices of elderberries, currants or poke for shades of magenta; and a wide range of herbs and roots such as turmeric or beets for yellow and pink.

Shredding of plant matter for natural dyes produced modeled colors, especially onion skins, which created a variegated appearance if left in close contact with the eggs. If the dye plants were boiled and strained, the dye produced a uniform color. Not only chicken eggs were dyed in this way but also goose, duck, turkey, guinea and peahen eggs.

Eggs that cracked in the boiling process were saved for eating, while only the best were selected for decoration. Deep colors, especially reds, greens and browns, were favored for high-contrast traditional decorations made with a variety of scratching techniques. A pen knife or a pin with the head firmly pressed into a cork worked perfectly to remove portions of the dyed surface, revealing the white of the shell underneath.

Men, women and children participated in this delicate art form, often inscribing the eggs with names, initials, dates and artistic renderings to give as gifts for family and friends. Decorative inscriptions varied considerably from person to person including a wide range of representational and abstracted forms. Although geometric, floral and bird patterns were among the most numerous, other images included houses, grandfather clocks, agricultural implements, angels, people and animals.

A contemporary Easter egg decorated with coils of binsegraas by artist Elaine Vardjan, a senior member of the Pennsylvania Guild of Craftsmen, Berks Chapter. Long strands of bullrush pith are carefully extracted by hand and adhered to the egg with paste. Patches of fabric are also applied to give color and variety.
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

In addition to scratching, several other techniques were employed, including the use of applied patterned fabrics or the pith carefully removed from binsegraas, the common bulrush. Strands of binsegraas pith could be applied in two basic techniques, either by wrapping the entire egg in tight spirals and applying fabric to the surface or by using the pith to outline cut out pieces of fabric, a technique favored in the 20th century by the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County.

Although thousands of Easter eggs would have been decorated each year throughout the centuries, very few of these fragile eggs have survived from one generation to the next. As a result, many of the earliest eggs preserved by families, private collectors and institutions are from the first few decades of the 19th century, though some rare 18th-century examples do exist. This ephemeral nature of the tradition was the subject of much attention in late-19th-century newspapers throughout southeastern and central Pennsylvania, where editors queried their readers about the oldest of such eggs found in local communities.

The Lancaster Daily Express on March 27, 1875, reported the survival of an Easter egg scratched 100 years prior, when Easter was celebrated just three days before the Battles of Lexington and Concord at the start of the Revolutionary War in 1775. In 1884 the Mount Joy Herald included an account of yet an older egg. Jacob N. Brubaker (1832– 1913), bishop of the Lancaster Mennonite Conference and member of the Landisville Mennonite congregation, described an egg formerly owned by Mara Brubaker, bearing the initials “M. B.” and the year “1774.” This egg survives today as part of the Pennsylvania Folklife Society Collection at the Berman Museum, Ursinus College.

The three eggs at the bottom are by the family of master stone carver Enos K. Newman (1832–1910), a third-generation egg artist from Palm, Montgomery County. The two eggs at the top were scratched in 1808 and 1818 by Enos’ grandfather, Christopher Newman.
Eggs, Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center, Pennsburg, PA / Photo by Patrick J. Donmoyer

An interesting story of yet more Montgomery County Easter eggs can be traced to the Schwenkfelder community of the Upper Perkiomen, where a master stonecutter and painter, Enos K. Newman (1832–1910), had preserved an extensive collection of eggs scratched by several generations in his family. The oldest of these was scratched by his grandfather Christopher Newman in the first few decades of the 19th century. Enos continued the tradition well up to the turn of the century. He later moved to Manassas, Virginia, but returned briefly to Pennsylvania and eventually spent his final years in Washington, D.C. He left a trail of decorated eggs in his wake, including one featuring the Washington Monument.

The Schwenkfelder Library & Heritage Center in Pennsburg has some of the Newman family’s Easter eggs, including one bearing an elaborate rendering of an angel blowing a trumpet, surrounded by flowers and a banner reading “Trust.” Curator Candace Perry located the story of Enos Newman’s intergenerational Easter egg collection in an article from April 23, 1909, which ran in dozens of newspapers across the country. Entitled “This Egg Is 100 Years Old,” the article reported that the oldest egg in Newman’s collection was one inscribed by his grandfather in 1808.

Newspapers highlighted not only the Easter eggs that survived the centuries but also other less delicate practices involving Easter eggs. These traditions include annual egg eating contests or a competitive game called “egg picking,” in which two eggs were struck against one another and the egg that survived the encounter was determined the winner. Competitive children selected eggs for their shape and hardness of shell in the hopes of qualifying as the local champion.

Schoolmaster and church warden Johann Conrad Gilbert (1734-1812) of Brunswick Township, Schuylkill County (formerly Berks), painted the two oldest known images of the Easter Rabbit in North America. This one was created sometime between 1790 and 1810, likely as a reward of merit, or Belohnung, for Gilbert’s pupils.
The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (Museum Purchase)

One of the most notable Pennsylvania Dutch contributions to the Easter celebration in North America is the Easter Rabbit. Evidence indicates that early Pennsylvania families prepared Easter baskets for the Oschderhaas, who would visit unseen in the night, children were told, to fill the baskets with decorated eggs. It was also customary to hide hard-boiled dyed eggs throughout the property for the children to gather in their baskets. Two images produced between 1790 and 1810 by the teacher and prolific fraktur artist Johann Conrad Gilbert (1734–1812) depict the Easter Rabbit carrying a basketful of eggs. Gilbert made these two drawings as rewards of merit for schoolchildren sometime around the turn of the century while serving as schoolmaster in Brunswick Township, Berks County. Brunswick is now located in Schuylkill County on the southernmost edge of the Coal Region, where some of the most diverse Easter traditions are practiced in the commonwealth.

Eastern European Traditions in Pennsylvania

As coal, steel and railroads transformed Pennsylvania into an industrial power in the 19th century, emigrants from throughout Europe and other parts of the world settled not only in urban centers, such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, but also in the Coal Region of the northeastern part of the state. The Eastern European element in these industrial communities remains substantial today and includes families with Ukrainian, Slovakian, Polish, Russian, Hungarian and Lithuanian roots. Interwoven in this variegated tapestry of cultures, Easter traditions, including decorated eggs, are one of the many colorful expressions of these primarily Orthodox Christian communities.

A variety of eggs made by Helen Badulak. Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

Similar to the Roman Catholic influence in the folk culture of Central Europe, Easter traditions are a central feature of the Orthodox Church of Eastern Europe. The integration of daily life and the church liturgy produced robust and spiritually charged traditions of decorated eggs, produced in a variety of styles across many cultures. Pennsylvania’s Coal Region is home to many of these traditional forms of decorated eggs, including pysanky among the Ukrainians, Poles and other Slavic groups and margučiai among the Lithuanians. These intricately decorated eggs were once central to the sacred, agricultural and social spheres of life in Eastern Europe.

The word pysanky (plural of pysanka) comes from the Ukrainian verb pysaty, meaning “to write or inscribe,” as these eggs are known for their detailed appearance achieved through a wax-resist method in which the artisan uses a stylus, called a kistka, to apply wax in patterns, masking many layers of color from successive dips into a dye bath. Traditional patterns range from distinctive geometric and floral designs to religious imagery and are known for their high-contrast multicolor compositions. Although today many pysanky eggs are regarded as works of culturally specific folk art, the eggs had a formal liturgical function for previous generations and were part of a wide spectrum of folk traditions.

Ukrainian families typically began decorating eggs early in Lent to have an abundant supply for the many social and religious functions for which they were required. Eggs fell generally into two categories: krashanky, those that were simply dyed red with onion skins over Holy Week to be blessed and eaten on Easter, and pysanky, which were painstakingly made over many weeks to be distributed as gifts, offerings or blessings.

Helen Badulak applies patterns to the surface of an ostrich egg with a traditional wax resist technique using a kistka.
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

Traditionally, eggs of both types were brought to church to be blessed alongside paska (Easter bread) and portions of each type of food from the Easter meal. Some of the eggs were eaten. Others were used in spinning or cracking games thought to bring a blessing upon participants. Decorated eggs according to custom were distributed to family members, friends and the clergy and placed on graves of recently deceased loved ones and ancestors. Eggs were preserved in the home as a blessing to the house. In agricultural communities, they were placed in the barn as a protective measure to ensure good health to the livestock, put under beehives, and buried in fields to bless the acreage prior to plowing.

Reflecting this multitude of uses at church, home and farm, eggs were decorated with a wide range of designs, featuring images of the sun, rain, spring flowers, birds, crosses, crops, livestock and even agricultural implements. Some of the oldest traditional designs are known to predate Christianity and are rooted in the ancient agrarian cultures that saw the egg as a symbol of new life.

An old Ukrainian legend concerning pysanky recounts that an evil monster is chained to the side of a mountain and each year the eggs are counted. If only a small number of eggs were created that year, the monster’s bonds would be loosened, allowing evil to spread throughout the earth. But if the people were observant and made many eggs, the chains would be tightened, and the evil would be kept at bay.

This story highlighted the ritual function of the eggs as an expression of goodness and blessing, not only to one’s own family and home but also to the entire community and the world itself. Women typically worked on the eggs late in the evenings after children were asleep, while blessings, well-wishes and prayers were said over the eggs. Only fertile eggs were used because these were believed to impart fertility to the family. Although there were community variations in the tradition in Pennsylvania, similar practices were known throughout Eastern Europe by many names and artistic forms.

A traditional Lithuanian egg, featuring a classic wax-resist pattern called “drop-and-pull” technique. Wax is applied to the surface of the egg with a pointed instrument, whereby the wax forms a drop, and is pulled to a narrow point.
Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center, Kutztown University

In 20th-century Eastern Europe, many of these colorful traditions were outlawed for their religious significance under communist rule. Communities in Pennsylvania and locations throughout North America played a unique part in preserving decorated eggs and other traditions for generations of immigrants who left Europe. Today’s artisans have new ways of learning and exploring the tradition to connect with their roots as a consciously cultivated craft that reflects cultural heritage. One such artist is Helen Badulak of Oley, Berks County, who describes pysanky as her meditation. She learned the craft in 1969 as a way to connect with her Ukrainian roots, lost to her as a preteen during World War II. Badulak is now a nationally recognized master of pysanky, specializing in both traditional and modern expressions, and her daughter Nina McDaniel and granddaughter Kristina Schaeffer carry on the tradition. Collectively the three artists share more than a century of experience between them.

Margučiai is a Lithuanian tradition of decorating eggs either with a scratching technique or with the wax-resist dyeing method. Christine Luschas, a lawyer in Columbia County, has become one of the Coal Region’s premier artists of traditional margučiai. Luschas’ parents grew up in Mahanoy City, Schuylkill County, where her mother learned the traditional drop-and-pull wax-resist dyeing technique from her grandfather over his coal stove. This method produces intricate groupings of distinctive teardrop shapes. Her mother’s aunt and Lithuanian Catholic nun, Sister Naberta, specialized in scratched eggs, some of which are preserved by the family to this day. Luschas and her sister learned to scratch eggs as children using these eggs as inspiration, and after 20 years she has become a master in the technique. Luschas even showcased the tradition on the Martha Stewart Show in 2012. Although she does not speak Lithuanian, Luschas is enamored with the folk culture and admires the diligence with which her grandparents ensured that their family’s connection to Lithuanian traditions was not lost.

Lithuanian margučiai scratched eggs by Christine Luschas of Columbia County, one of today’s premier artists of traditional eggs in the Coal Region. Courtesy of Christine Luschas

Although many generations have come and gone since the introduction of these traditions to Pennsylvania, the state’s diverse ethnic communities continue to inspire conversations about the value of maintaining folk culture in an everchanging world. Easter eggs are one of many aspects of regional expression that link the commonwealth’s complex identity with its artistic, religious, agricultural and ceremonial traditions. Although the self-awareness that accompanies the performance of these aspects of culture in the present day may at times differ dramatically from the informally inherited practices of the past, new generations of families and artists are ensuring that these valuable expressions of folk culture are in no danger of vanishing from Pennsylvania.

Patrick J. Donmoyer is the director of the Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University. He is the author of several books and is a regular contributor to Pennsylvania Heritage. His most recent articles are “Kutztown Folk Festival: America’s Oldest Folklife Celebration” (Summer 2019), “Der Belsnickel: Nicholas in Furs or the Hairy Devil?” (Winter 2018), and “Powwowing: Ritual Healing in Pennsylvania Dutch Country” (Winter 2017).