People don't seem to decorate as many Easter eggs nowadays

[mesquite]

I did so many I can still smell the vinegar.

Be interesting to know the percentage of people under 40 who did not boil an egg last year.

Also, the percentage of people under 30 who have never boiled an egg.

[Valerie]

There probably are quite a few who have never done it. I'm sad for all those little kids with the plastic eggs. We always loved the ritual of dying eggs. It was like alchemy. My kids loved it, too. And talking about it does make your nose feel tingly from the vinegar smell.

We're having an Easter egg hunt at school next Friday. First grade is having theirs later that same day. Mrs. Tibbs says they usually have quite a few real eggs, and those kids sit right down and scarf them up. One year she had a kid who ate 7 before anyone could stop him! Andrea says it's pretty nasty watching kindergarteners eat boiled eggs. I'll tell y'all about it.

[Cyngbaeld]

We didn't color eggs till I was big enough to do it by myself. Wasn't anything mom wanted to do. I have a pic of 3yo me and 4yo Katherine in our easter dresses, bonnets, patent leather shoes, purses and HUGE easter baskets. The baskets were prefilled and wrapped in colored cellophane. (1955) We were poor as dirt, couldn't afford the luxuries, but Dad always wanted to do something a little special when he could.

[Valerie]

We would have give our eye teeth for one of those "fancy" baskets from the store, Kim. Sounds like you had a sweet daddy.

[upnorthlady2]

Growing up in a typical Polish tradition, Easter egg dying was always a big deal at our house. And Easter was always special - we always got a new outfit and a new hat to wear to church. Most women don't wear hats anymore, but I do! Pretty much every Sunday I have a hat on in church.

But back to the original post - maybe egg dying is too old fashioned for today's kids. Maybe too boring? I suppose there are those who would cite "safety concerns", where kids might try to swallow the dye??? (It would never occur to us to do that back in the 50's!) And I would guess that some folks would have issues with putting real eggs outside in all the "dirt and germs, ya know". Back in the days when we hid real eggs, our Moms told us that if the egg was cracked and full of dirt, don't eat it. Common sense. We didn't leave eggs out there in the sun for hours either - we found eggs right away. Actually, most of the time, we never hid eggs outside too often because where we lived it was still pretty cold for Easter. We just colored them and had them laying around the dinner table or breakfast table. I'm sure today's obsession with food safety and germs has a lot to do with Easter eggs. People used to use plain old common sense, but I think that doesn't apply anymore. Also dying eggs takes kids away from video games and texting (eyes rolling with sarcasm).

[Valerie]

I don't remember us ever hiding and finding the eggs, either, Patty. Except when I was in 1st grade the teacher took us on a field trip to her house for an egg hunt in the yard. At home, we colored them on Saturday, then left them in the fridge for Easter Bunny to put in our baskets. For us the fun was in dying them, and eating them too, since they weren't something we had very often.

[michelle]

I think that when we go to my sister's house next Saturday we're dying eggs with my nephew (he's 3). We always had an ugly egg contest for the last couple of eggs growing up.

[Valerie]

Becky did up some real pretty eggs this year. She used our eggs, and some of them are a fairly dark brown. One came out a gorgeous emerald green.

Here's how it went at school. We asked each kid to bring in 6 eggs. We have 19 kids. We wound up with 295 eggs. One lady brought in a box of 120 plastic eggs, very cheap from Dollar Tree. It looks like, at least in this neck of the woods, that might be why the plastic eggs are so popular. They're cheap and they involve candy. Some come pre-loaded with candy!

We did have 2 1/2 dozen real eggs. Two of the boys are cousins, and one of the other kids' grandma gave their grandma a dozen eggs so they would have some to bring. I don't know what the world they colored them with, but they were all the same color, red, and I had that mess all over my hands for an entire day. It didn't stick to the eggs well. Maybe they didn't use vinegar.

More of the kids may have colored real eggs at home when it got closer to Easter, like Saturday night. That's when we always did ours, on Saturday. For school, they were supposed to be in by Thursday.