Chocolatier and charity say there are many references to Easter in their egg hunt marketing after Theresa May weighs in to row

For many, it was a storm in an egg cup. But the supposed removal by Cadbury and the National Trust of references to Easter from material promoting egg hunts across the country was enough to divert the prime minister’s attention from international diplomacy and trade to garishly-wrapped confectionery.

It was “absolutely ridiculous”, Theresa May said in Amman, en route for Saudi Arabia, that the National Trust had – as a Church of England spokesman put it – “airbrushed faith from Easter”. And the prime minister laid out her credentials on the subject: “I’m not just a vicar’s daughter, I’m a member of the National Trust as well,” she said. “I don’t know what they are thinking about, frankly.”

Theresa May condemns National Trust for axing 'Easter' from egg hunt Read more

John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, had weighed in too. He said that it was tantamount to “spitting on the grave” of John Cadbury, the chocolate firm’s 19th century Quaker founder. Later Jeremy Corbyn gave his opinion: “It upsets me because I don’t think Cadbury should take over the name of Easter,” he said. The move, he said, was “commercialisation gone a bit too far”.

The Lib Dems’ Tim Farron, taking the opposite view, produced a statement featuring at least six egg puns in defence of Cadbury and the National Trust. “I think we all feel poached by this whole sorry saga,” he said.



The subject of the row might have seemed trivial to the casual observer. Cadbury, it was reported, had rebranded its annual “Easter Egg Trail”, held in conjunction with the National Trust, as the “Great British Egg Hunt”. The confectioner wanted “people from all faiths and none to enjoy our seasonal treats”, it said.

On Tuesday, the charity moved to limit the damage, adding the words “this Easter” to a webpage headlined “Join the Cadbury egg hunts” – even if it already appeared as part of a section entitled “things to do over the Easter holidays”.

More generally, though, they declined to back down. “It’s nonsense to suggest the National Trust is downplaying the significance of Easter. Nothing could be further from the truth,” the National Trust said in a statement. “A casual glance at our website will see dozens of references to Easter throughout.”

Cadbury felt that the row was as confected as their chocolate – and might have had painful memories of a previous publicity headache, when a false story got around that their chocolate recipe had been altered to make them halal, necessitating a laborious process of correcting its critics on Twitter. This time, the company pointed out that while it’s true that the publicity referred to “the Cadbury Egg Hunt”, it also featured the word “Easter” in very large letters.

“It is simply not true to claim that Easter does not feature in our marketing communications or on our products,” they said plaintively. “It is clear to see that within our communications we visibly state the word Easter. It is included a number of times across promotional materials... and even embossed on many of the eggs themselves.”

Can you spot the word Easter anywhere? Photograph: Cadbury

Even Sentamu’s bombastic language about John Cadbury may have been misplaced. A descendant of the chocolatier, Esther McConnell, tweeted that “as a Quaker, he didn’t celebrate Easter”. She added: “I’m sure John Cadbury (my g. g. g. g. grandfather) is not spinning in his grave.”

Nevertheless, the brouhaha reflected genuine unease among some Christians that their faith, once deeply embedded in the nation’s psyche, is becoming increasingly marginalised in a country where the non-religious are steadily outstripping the faithful. In 2014, a British Social Attitudes survey found that 48.5% of the population said they had no religion, compared with 43.8% who defined themselves as Christian.



According to David Marshall, founder and director of the Meaningful Chocolate Company which makes and markets religiously-themed Easter eggs, the vast majority of the 80m chocolate eggs sold in the UK have removed or downgraded references in their packaging to Easter.



He launched a range of Real Easter Eggs, some of which include a 24-page story book explaining the death and resurrection of Jesus, after being given a chocolate egg in 2010 proclaiming “Easter is the festival of chocolate and loveliness”.



Paul Bickley of Theos, a thinktank on religion and society, said: “Religion is being marginalised, but not by political correctness or multiculturalism gone mad but by corporate culture. For Cadbury, it’s about selling chocolate.”



The story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus was central to the Christian faith, he added. “But it’s the job of the church, not Cadbury, to speak about the message and significance of Easter.”



Whatever the hubbub on Tuesday, the “supposed secularisation of chocolate egg hunts” was a relatively minor issue for the Church of England, said David Tollerton, lecturer in theology and religion at Exeter university. “The Church of England has much bigger problems with both falling attendances and debates about sexuality that make it appear morally out of touch,” he said.



“With Easter, like Christmas, trying to work out where the ‘religious’ ends and the ‘secular’ begins is a pretty imprecise business in which the noisiest commentators clearly have axes to grind.”



This week’s Easter egg furore is not unprecedented. It follows complaints about the rebranding of Christmas as “Winterval”, the relegation or withdrawal of traditional carol services and nativity plays in schools, the rejection by big cinema chains in 2015 to show a 60-second advert on The Lord’s Prayer, an outcry in December over a nurse who was allegedly sacked after offering to pray with patients, and criticism of a recent European court of justice ruling permitting employers to ban workers from wearing religious symbols or clothing.



The church was trying to win attention from a country largely indifferent to its message, said Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society. “What the church regards as marginalisation is simply indifference,” he said. “Many people in modern Britain have little interest in Christianity – or religion generally. That doesn’t mean we no longer celebrate Christmas and Easter, it just means we no longer celebrate them in ways that revolve around supernatural beliefs. That’s not the result of persecution, just free will.”



According to Linda Woodhead, professor of sociology of religion at Lancaster University, “the C of E feels that every other faith gets recognition and treated with deference, but it’s fine to trash Christianity. It feels that we don’t nurture and cherish our cultural identity. There’s a lot of sensitivity around that.”



The Easter egg row “tells us we’re completely split as a nation. We’re not a Christian nation, but nor are we a secular nation. We’re something much more complex,” she added.



The prime minister’s intervention was not surprising, Woodhead said. “As a vicar’s daughter, she’s genuine about it. But the people she most wants to appeal to are the ones who will be most exercised by this.”

On her way to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, May said: “Easter’s very important. It’s important to me. It’s a very important festival for the Christian faith for millions across the world.”

On the other hand, there was speculation in some quarters that her response may have been motivated in part by her difficult relationship with Helen Ghosh, the National Trust’s director-general, who was permanent secretary at the Home Office when May was the secretary of state.

And, more to the point, the irony of her criticism of the National Trust and Cadbury ahead of a trade visit to a regime which violently represses Christians and other non-Muslims was highlighted by commentators. “It beggars belief that Theresa May is speaking out about Easter eggs while visiting a country where Christians are routinely persecuted and blasphemers beheaded,” said Evans.



Easter egg history

Eggs at Easter are thought to have their origins in pagan rather Christian traditions. Now the consumption of chocolate is indelibly associated with Easter, and has become an industry worth hundreds of millions of pounds.

Pagan festivals to celebrate the start of spring incorporated eggs as a symbol of fertility and new life.



Eggs became important in Christian festivities when the church forbade their consumption during Lent. People began to decorate them, perhaps as symbols of the resurrection, to be eaten after the fast.



Later, eggs made from cardboard and covered in satin were filled with small gifts and sweets.



The first solid chocolate eggs appeared in the 19th century in France and Germany, with Britain following suit. It took confectioners many decades to perfect the production of hollow chocolate eggs. The first creme eggs were sold in the 1920s.



Easter egg hunts have grown in popularity. Some 350,000 people are expected to take part in egg hunts atNational Trust sites this year.