An Innocent Tradition

Every year, as a child, Easter egg hunts were a beloved part of our family’s celebration. We hunted for prize-filled eggs at both grandparents’ houses, and Dad always hid one tiny Easter egg with $5 in it. In the weeks leading up to Easter, he would even hide a small egg somewhere in the house for my brothers and me to search for—and whoever found it got the money. It became a fun, lighthearted competition—one of those little traditions that forms the soundtrack of childhood.

We didn’t just hunt eggs—we dyed them, too. Some years we covered them with stickers; other years we shrink-wrapped designs of our favorite cartoon characters around them. Those simple rituals created warm memories that my wife and I have continued in Easter celebrations with our own kids.

Even into adulthood, these traditions always felt pure and innocent to me. Yes, I occasionally wondered how eggs came to be part of celebrating the resurrection of Jesus. Still, I never saw anything remotely harmful or spiritually suspect about dyeing or hunting Easter eggs.

A Troubling Claim

All of that is why I was so surprised when a friend sent me a video claiming that Easter eggs originated from an ancient Babylonian ritual in which eggs were dipped in the blood of sacrificed infants offered to the goddess Ishtar.

What stunned me even more was the video’s reach: the channel had hundreds of thousands of subscribers, the video had hundreds of thousands of views, and the comment section was almost entirely supportive. Clearly, this wasn’t a fringe claim whispered in a dark corner of the internet—many people were accepting it as fact.

And as Christians, we are called to “test everything; hold on to what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). So I began asking the obvious questions:

• Was any of this actually true?
• Where did Easter eggs really come from?

What followed was a deep dive into history, Scripture, and the claims themselves. The truth, as you’ll see, is much simpler—and far more Christian—than many viral videos suggest.

The Claim: Easter Eggs Are “Ishtar Eggs”

According to the TruthUnedited video, Easter eggs are not innocent at all—they are supposedly “Ishtar eggs,” symbolic of a woman’s reproductive system. The logic goes like this: because Ishtar was a sex and fertility goddess, eggs must be sexual symbols tied to her worship.

The video claims that during ancient spring festivals, priests sacrificed babies conceived during sexual rituals performed the previous Easter. These babies, allegedly born around December 25, were then offered to Ishtar at the following spring festival. Priests then dipped eggs into the blood of these sacrificed children.

The conclusion?

Any involvement with Easter eggs today—dying, decorating, hiding, or hunting—means participating in ancient pagan worship and blood sacrifice.

But this raises an important question:

Does any ancient evidence support this?

What Actual Scholars Say

According to real Assyriologists and Babylonian historians:

• Not a single Babylonian text connects Ishtar with eggs.¹
• No archaeological evidence shows eggs used in Mesopotamian worship.²
• Not one ancient myth describes blood-dipped eggs, fertility orgies involving eggs, or eggs connecting to Semiramis (Ishtar) or Tammuz.³

The entire “Ishtar Egg” narrative traces not to the ancient world but to 19th-century folklore and Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons—a book rejected across the scholarly world for its inaccurate use of sources and unsupported claims.⁴

So if the egg didn’t come from Ishtar, where did it come from?

The Real Origin: Eggs Came From Christian Lenten Practice

In the Middle Ages, Christians observed a strict Lenten fast that prohibited:

• meat
• dairy
• eggs

But hens didn’t stop laying. So Christians collected the eggs laid during Lent, boiled them to preserve them, and celebrated the end of the fast by enjoying them on Easter Sunday.⁶

Because families needed a way to track which eggs were oldest—long before refrigeration—they began marking or tinting the older eggs with natural dyes such as onion skins, beet juice, madder root, saffron, and boiled flowers.⁷

Eventually, these practical markings evolved into decorative traditions. By the later Middle Ages, dyed eggs were associated with joy, feasting, and resurrection celebration.

So the real question becomes:

Which explanation fits the evidence—Ishtar’s blood rituals or simple Christian fasting practices?

The historical record overwhelmingly supports the latter.

Eggs Became a Resurrection Symbol in the Early Church

By the 4th century, Christian preachers were already using eggs as a vivid illustration of the resurrection. The unbroken shell symbolized Christ’s sealed tomb; the cracking of the shell symbolized the new life bursting forth when He rose.⁸

By the Middle Ages, Christians in the Eastern Church deepened the symbolism by dyeing eggs red to represent the blood of Christ shed for sinners, a tradition preserved in Orthodox practice today.⁹

The Greek Orthodox Church summarizes it like this:

“The red egg is a universal symbol of the Resurrection, representing the sealed tomb from which life burst forth by the power of Christ.”
—Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America¹⁰

Egg symbolism wasn’t borrowed from pagans. It grew out of biblical reflection, Christian worship, and the church’s desire to illustrate the miracle of the empty tomb.

What About Easter Egg Hunts?

Egg hunts originated not in Babylon but in 16th-century Germany, specifically within Lutheran Christian communities.¹¹ Parents hid eggs for their children as a joyful way to represent the women who searched for Jesus at the tomb (Matthew 28; Mark 16; Luke 24; John 20).

Some scholars note that families in Martin Luther’s tradition used hidden eggs in their own home celebrations to reenact the discovery of the empty tomb.¹¹

By 1682, the tradition was so common that German folklorist Georg Franck von Franckenau documented it in De Ovis Paschalibus (“On Easter Eggs”), describing how eagerly children hunted eggs each Easter morning.¹

German immigrants, especially the Pennsylvania Dutch, brought the custom to America, where it became the modern Easter egg hunt.

Again:

No pagan connection.
No Babylonian ritual.
Just a cheerful Christian tradition pointing to the joy of resurrection.

Why This Matters for Christian Discipleship

Many believers still ask:

“Even if the history checks out, shouldn’t we be careful?”

That’s a wise and humble question. But the historical evidence shows:

• Easter eggs come from Christian fasting,
• grew into Christian resurrection symbolism, and
• remain a cultural, joyful, harmless practice for families today.

Scripture teaches that “nothing is unclean in itself” (Rom. 14:14) and that whatever we do can be done “to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31).

If your family uses Easter eggs to celebrate the hope of resurrection, you’re not dabbling in paganism.

You’re celebrating life in Christ.

A Personal Word as We Close

I understand why some believers hesitate. When you love Jesus sincerely, you want to avoid anything that might dishonor Him. That desire is good and godly.

But when we slow down and look honestly at the evidence, the picture becomes beautifully simple:

Easter eggs did not come from goddess worship or pagan rituals. They came from Christian fasting rhythms, resurrection teaching, and centuries of believers joyfully celebrating the empty tomb.

Paul reminds us that “nothing is unclean in itself” (Rom. 14:14) and that even small acts can glorify God (1 Cor. 10:31).

So if your family enjoys Easter eggs as part of celebrating Jesus’ resurrection, breathe easy. You’re not drifting into paganism—you’re rejoicing in the risen Christ. You’re joining a long line of Christians who saw in the cracking of an egg a tiny, beautiful picture of the stone rolled away.

Celebrate the resurrection of Jesus freely and joyfully.

Footnotes & Sources

1. Georg Franck von Franckenau, De Ovis Paschalibus (1682).
2. British Museum, Mesopotamia Collection: Mesopotamian galleries and object records.
3. Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia (Oxford University Press, 2000); Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians (University of Chicago Press, 1963).
4. Ralph Woodrow, The Babylon Connection? (1997), critiquing Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons.
5. Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, “Easter Eggs.”
6. Venetia Newall, An Egg at Easter (Routledge, 1971).
7. Newall, An Egg at Easter, on natural dyes and egg decoration traditions.
8. Augustine, Sermon 243, using natural images as resurrection metaphors.
9. Medieval Eastern Christian traditions documented in liturgical sources; summarized in Newall, An Egg at Easter.
10. Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America, “Red Eggs at Pascha.”
11. Jack Santino, All Around the Year (University of Illinois Press, 1994); Karl-Heinz Bieritz, Fest und Feier.