Easter Sunday falls on the last day of March this year, and many places are gearing up to run Easter egg hunts and trails.
The custom has a long history, as shown in this extract from SPEC Oldham 183, the c.1871 English translation of the German children’s book Die Ostereier (Easter Eggs, 1816) by Christoph von Schmid (1768-1854). Von Schmid, a Roman Catholic priest and headmaster, was the most popular writer of 19th century Germany, and his works were translated into 24 languages. Easter Eggs was the best known of his moral stories for children, which he wrote to read aloud to his pupils at Thannhausen in Bavaria as an after-school treat.
His prolific writings (his Collected Works fill 26 volumes) also include First Lessons about God for the Little Ones, written in words of one syllable – a remarkable feat in German – and The Basket of Flowers, or Piety and Truth triumphant, which has been described as the ‘archetypal Sunday School book’, and was a popular reward book. Although German editions of Von Schmid’s stories are usually described as
“by the author of Easter Eggs”, many English editions, like this one, are attributed to “the author of the Basket of Flowers”.
