Pecking Eggs
My little beauties
Pecking eggs at Easter has been a family traditon for along time though no one knows for sure where it came from. We think it's a German or Austrian tradition brought over when folks emigrated to the area back in the late 1800s. Back in the 1940s and 1950s the local Catholic church invited folks to bring their eggs in after mass and to 'peck' away in the gym. My family has been doing it since at least then and you can find other families that still do it too (each a little different) in the area. Here is a little background on the whole process of pecking eggs: obviously you have to hard boil the eggs and then most people decorate them w/ food coloring or some sort of other dye. When you're actually pecking eggs w/ someone, one person will hold on to their egg, w/ say the pointed end up and the other person will peck w/ their pointed end until someone's egg cracks. Once that happens you flip it over to the other side and the person who was getting pecked, now get's to peck that person's egg until it cracks. The person whose egg gets cracked on both side loses and the winner gets to keep that egg. In the event both people end up w/ one cracked side each you peck the undamaged sides together until someone's cracks. The ironic thing about pecking eggs is that on one really likes hard boiled eggs in the first place, at least not two dozen or so you normally end up with! The main reason most people peck eggs is just to visit w/ friends and relatives they haven't seen for awhile, some of my relatives I only see at Easter because of egg pecking. This year I bought three dozen to boil so I'd end up w/ at least two dozen to peck w/ since we were going to a few houses. We started off at Betty & Milton's house, Betty is my grandma's neice so it's mainly distant relation over there. After about an hour or so, we went over to Tom's house where most of the Binders were. Tom is my second cousin and has a few brothers that were over as well, they have a cabin near my family's so we spent a good bit of time w/ them growing up. It's a strange tradition I know, but a fun one as far as I'm concerned!
