It’s an annual row that seems to start earlier and earlier – the great Easter egg debate.

Social media becomes awash with companies forced to defend their Easter products from an army of people claiming that they do not feature the religious aspects of the festival prominently enough, or have been made halal. The debate has become increasingly politicised, with many rightwing groups amplifying the message.

“It’s amazing that in such a politically correct society we can’t call Easter eggs Easter eggs anymore”, the official Ukip Twitter account said on Monday.

The claim was prompted by a statement by Sainsbury’s social media team which said the supermarket preferred to label them “chocolate eggs” as it was a more accurate portrayal of the product.

However, the idea that the word Easter has disappeared from the packaging of chocolate eggs in recent years appears to be unfounded. For example, several Cadbury products this year clearly feature the word Easter.

Cadbury products labelled with the word Easter on display in a supermarket this year. Photograph: Martin Belam

And it is also not true that “Easter” was once ubiquitous on products, as many point out by sharing photos of confectionery from the 1970s and 80s that did not feature the word.

Images like these are used to rebut the claim that labelling Easter eggs as ‘chocolate eggs’ is a recent phenomenon. Photograph: Rowntree

Supermarkets are also frequently criticised for not giving Easter a prominent display in store. Again, most do indeed use Easter as a marketing tool: on Tuesday, for example, Aldi, Lidl, Sainbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons promoted products labelled as “Easter food” on their website homepages.

Some media criticism of Easter egg marketing has in the past been driven by The Meaningful Chocolate Company. Their “The Real Easter Egg” brand – emphasising the Christian origins of Easter – has been effective in utilising voices of prominent church figures.

In 2013, the archbishop of York, John Sentamu, joined calls for supermarkets to stock the overtly Christian egg, the proceeds of which were being donated to charity.

Last year, Theresa May was dragged into the annual row after a National Trust rebrand led to the renaming of their “Easter Egg Trail” as the “Great British Egg Hunt”.

Companies like Cadbury, as well as not labelling their eggs, have also been accused of not supporting Easter, even when the word is clearly visible on products.



Comments under Cadbury’s Easter Egg hunt announcement on Facebook claiming that the chocolatier is not supporting the religious festival. Photograph: Facebook/Cadbury UK

The “Easter eggs are halal” argument has also become an important tool of the far right. The For Britain party, set up by anti-Islam campaigner Anne Marie Waters after she failed to secure the leadership of Ukip, tweeted: “Halal Easter eggs, like praying at Speakers’ Corner, is a show of Islamic dominance. All must submit; all must be subject to sharia.”

Before his suspension from Twitter, Tommy Robinson, the former leader of the far-right group EDL, posted: “Easter is a Christian holiday. Why the fuck are the eggs halal! Islamisation of the UK.”

A spokesperson for the group Tell Mama, which monitors Islamophobic incidents in the UK, said: “The fact that people are making ‘halal Easter eggs’ should not be of major concern to people, since celebrating Easter by enjoying in its symbolism and reflecting on what Easter is about are what people should be doing.

“Halal Easter eggs are not some form of ‘creeping sharia’, for those who defer back to this ludicrous argument.”

Chocolate is halal by default because it does not contain meat products or anything haram. Cadbury’s social media team is kept busy at Easter repeatedly explaining that: “In UK our chocolate is suitable for vegetarians & those following a Muslim diet, however they’re not Halal certified. The only animal related products we use in UK are milk & eggs.”

The Cadbury UK social media team responding to questions about halal Easter eggs on a particularly busy day for them in 2017. Photograph: Twitter

This year, Sainsbury’s bore the brunt of the annual backlash. The retailer’s social media team has been forced to repeatedly correct a tweet that claimed all their Easter eggs were specifically “halal-certified”, rather than simply suitable for a halal diet.

Though the egg has long been associated with the Christian festival as a symbol of rebirth, adopted from pagan traditions that celebrated the beginning of spring, chocolate eggs are a relatively recent addition to Easter traditions.

They were first manufactured in continental Europe in the 1800s, and the Cadbury Dairy Milk variety was launched in 1905.