Keep Egging on Easter

A new survey suggests that the population want to keep the word Easter on their festive eggs – with 79% disagreeing that the term ‘Easter’ should be avoided on packaging.

More than 80 million chocolate Easter eggs are sold every year in the UK but over the past five years many manufacturers have either removed the word Easter from their boxes, calling them just chocolate eggs, or reduced the word Easter to small print and put it on the back of the box.

The YouGov survey was commissioned by the Meaningful Chocolate Company, which makes The Real Easter Egg, the UK’s only Fairtrade, charity egg which includes a copy of the Easter story in the box.

David Marshall, CEO of Meaningful Chocolate said: “We are not sure if other manufacturers feel the word ‘Easter’ is too religious to be used on their products and so are trying to remove it or hide it away. But it is clear that the general public want their eggs to be Easter Eggs – a bit of a relief given the name of ours!”

Commenting on the survey, Bishop Nicholas said: “It is interesting that there seems to be a real resistance to removing the word Easter from these gifts. Perhaps people understand that the festival is religious and do not want to see it turned completely secular. Whatever the reasons it is important to remember that at Easter we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus.”

Some believe the word Easter has pagan rather than specifically Christian roots. Whatever the origins, for billions of people Easter is now the name given to the festival which marks the resurrection of Jesus following his death on Good Friday. It is the most important date in the Christian calendar. This celebration is also known as paques in France and pasqua in Italian all of which derive from the Latin word pascha which means passover.

The tradition of exchanging eggs to mark the Christian festival of Easter goes back hundreds of years. For some they represent hope and new life for others the hollow egg represents the empty tomb.

Launched in 2010, more than a million Real Easter Eggs have been sold in the past five years and thanks to the quality of the chocolate, in a recent public poll, the product was voted the UK's favourite Fairtrade Easter Egg. The Real Easter Egg is available from Tesco, Morrisons, Waitrose, independent and online retailers. Details of stockists can be found at http://www.realeasteregg.co.uk/