Every Easter, children across the country rush around their homes and gardens searching for eggs. Many are prize or candy filled, others are actual boiled eggs painted or decorated in other fashions.

For many families Easter just isn’t Easter without the annual egg hunt. Little boys and girls dress up in their extra special Sunday best and frolic around in the hunt.

Where did it all begin? It probably won’t come as a surprise to hear that like many of the holiday’s best-known customs, the egg hunt dates back thousands of years.

The custom of the Easter egg hunt comes from Germany. Some suggest that its origins date back to the late 16th century when the Protestant reformer Martin Luther organized egg hunts for his congregation.

The men would hide the eggs for the women and children to find. This was a nod to the story of the resurrection, in which Christ’s empty tomb was discovered by women.

In the German Lutheran tradition, the Easter egg hunt is linked to the Easter Bunny – or the Easter Hare as he was originally known. The first written reference to the Easter Hare was in 1682 in Georg Franck von Franckenau’s essay, De ovis paschalibus (‘About Easter eggs’).

Custom had it that the hare would bring a basket of brightly painted eggs for all the children who had been good, and these would be hidden around the house and garden for the children to find.

As a child the future Queen Victoria enjoyed egg hunts at Kensington Palace. These were put on by her mother, the German-born Duchess of Kent.

Victoria and Albert continued this German tradition, hiding eggs for their own children to find. Albert was responsible for hiding the eggs, concealing them in ‘little moss baskets’ and hiding them around the palace. Victoria made numerous references to these egg hunts in her journals.

Artificial eggs began to appear in London in the 1850s and, according to the Illustrated London News, had become popular by 1874.

Chocolate eggs first appeared in France and Germany in the early 19th century, but in the UK the first chocolate Easter egg was produced in 1873.

In modern times Easter egg hunts and egg rolling have become two popular egg-related traditions. In the U.S., the White House Easter Egg Roll, a race in which children push decorated, hard-boiled eggs across the White House lawn, is an annual event held the Monday after Easter. The first official White House egg roll occurred in 1878, when Rutherford B. Hayes was president.

The event has no religious significance, although some people have considered egg rolling symbolic of the stone blocking Jesus’ tomb being rolled away, leading to his resurrection.

Now that you know a little more about the hunt, grab your baskets, put on your Sunday bests and go be a kid again.