Easter Eggstra

Does anyone remember the old local custom of displaying Easter eggs in the front window? On my travels this week I haven't seen any Barrow houses with eggs on show . A few years back most houses with children used to have eggs in the window, and if you were really posh they were Cadburys. A daft place to keep them really the chocolate used to melt but as I found out recently it was not as I thought to make the other kids jealous but has its origins in earlier customs. I had picked an elderly lady up and she explained to me that in earlier times before the chocolate egg they had Pasch or past eggs, which were hard boiled eggs which where dyed and painted. Before they were rolled down a hill(locally this was the Amphitheatre) in the traditional Easter Sunday pastime of paste egging they were displayed in the front window. She also told me that empty pace-egg shells must be crushed as it was believed that witches used them as boats (mad eh). One thing I did see locally was Easter crackers for sale, which I have never seen round here before, wonder where that idea originates from, seems a bit daft to me.