MANY people today associate Easter with a deluge of chocolate eggs rather than the Christian commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and many other religious festivals and customs.

While the chocolate Easter egg is a relatively new tradition the origin of the Easter egg, and many more modern day Easter symbols, such as the Easter bunny, goes back a very long way and pre-date Christianity.

Modern symbols of Easter, such as the egg and the bunny, have their origins in paganism. Rabbits were the most potent symbol of fertility and the egg, the start of all life, was often thought to have magical powers.

The first chocolate Easter eggs were made in Europe in the early 19th Century with France and Germany taking the lead in this new artistic confectionery. A type of eating chocolate had been invented a few years earlier but it could not be successfully moulded. Some early eggs were solid while the production of the first hollow chocolate eggs were believed to have been rather painstaking construction as the moulds were lined with paste chocolate one at a time.

John Cadbury made his first “French eating Chocolate” in 1842 but it was not until 1875 that the first Cadbury Easter Eggs were made. The launch in 1905 of the famous Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chocolate made a tremendous contribution to the Easter egg market.

The popularity of this new kind of chocolate vastly increased sales of Easter eggs and did much to establish them as seasonal best sellers.