Whether it comes in eggs, chickens or rabbits, chocolate has long been omnipresent in Easter celebrations, but how did this tradition begin?
• Read also: Here is what is open or closed for Easter on March 29-30-31 and April 1, 2024
• Read also: Easter represents “a good 20% of annual sales” for chocolatiers
To understand this phenomenon, we must first go back to Antiquity, a period during which the custom of exchanging decorated eggs was born, when this symbol of fertility and renewal was notably used to mark the arrival of spring. , according to the media Ouest-France.
This tradition was taken up by the Christian Church when eggs were one of the foods prohibited during Lent, this 40-day period of deprivation ending on Easter Sunday, from the 3rd century.
It was finally in the 18th century that chocolate made its entry into the celebration of Easter.
With the democratization of cocoa, chocolate takes more and more shapes, including that of an egg.
This is how, little by little, decorated eggs give way to chocolate eggs, then eventually to rabbits and chickens, shapes imagined by the chocolatiers.
“The custom of offering chocolate eggs or rabbits is of commercial origin,” indicates the Catholic Church of France on its website.
Since then, Easter has represented a very important period for the turnover of chocolate makers.
In an interview with LCN, the co-founder of QANTU cocoa and chocolate estimates that there is “a 20% jump in annual sales” at the beginning of spring, which requires in particular an increase in chocolate production from January.