What do you do for easter?

[sj5 4]

What does your family do for Easter? Do you have an egg hunt? Eat a big lunch or dinner? If so, what do you usually have? Just curious how everyone else celebrates since we're such a diverse group.

[Ovaltine Jenkins 5]

Dye eggs, hunt for eggs, play the whack an egg game on Easter morning. My family has a pretty lame Easter dinner tradition, that is, re-hashing Thanksgiving as Easter dinner. All holiday meals are the same in the house of my mother's family.

Ed wont be celebrating easter as he did in Romania, here in my house we dont EAT the Easter Bunny for lunch tongue.gif

That is what my in-laws do. I think that is really creepy and weird. I don't know about Romania, but in Germany, they definitely do have an Easter Bunny. I did discover that I do like rabbit legs. Tastes like chicken. The saddle is a bit gross though.

Rabbit tastes delicious I guess you have to know how to make it Besides, it´s a very healthy meat

[pedroh 21]

roasted rabbit ftw

[Sinergy 3]

Well i just found out hubby is pissed, he sd sunday is the catholic easter, which is what i celebrate, he sd the christian/baptist easter is April 27. So hes refusing to celebrate on sunday with me and the kids

[Ms. Squirrel 11]

In the Czech Republic we have lotsa Easter traditions. At Easter it´s spring actually starting after snowey winter and everything starts getting green and flowery and stuff. One of the traditions is: guys go out and get 8 willow branches and weave a special stick out of it and on Easter Monday they go out (lil ones with their Dads usually and big ones with friends) and visit the houses of the girls they know and the girls get whipped a lil with the willow stick as the guys say an Easter poem or something and then the girls give them something (like coloured hardboiled eggs, chocolate eggs, bunnies, decorated Easter eggs, colourful ribbons for their willow sticks, etc...big boys like to get some booze )...also adult males visit the women within their family and do similar things ...the purpose of the whipping is that the fresh young branches are supposed to give new energy to the women and if they get whipped with it they won´t dry out by the next Easter. (Ofcourse like everywhere these days some people get lazy and actually get the stuff you can buy at stores for the whipping, which is wooden forks, dry willow branches sticks - nothing fresh at all, plastic stick...I refuse to get whipped by any of those cuz first it hurts more, second according to me there´s no point in supporting lazy guys and ruining the traditions). So in Czech Rep. families and friends get to see each other at Easter a lot

never would have thought of something like that! very interesting tradition. I think I will start it so I can go around spanking people with branches. hehe. watch out nessa!

On Good Friday, like every year, I go over to Mom's place and bake a trizillon Hot Cross Buns So that's more of an English tradition, I guess.

Since we have a Spanish background (Grandma is Catalan), we usually celebrate on Easter Monday rather than Easter Sunday - Grandma loves her paella, so I often make a giant paella with lots of sea food (prawn, mussels, fish, squid) plus chicken and sausages and on and on and on...This year I am making a lamb roast though - on a bed of rosemary, glazed with honey and seeded mustard.

Mom still makes basket full of choccies and eggs for me (that's more the German part of it), but she gave up on hiding the eggs for me (still upsets me LOL)

that all sounds so tasty! can I come?

Sure, as long as you bring the branches for a good spank...

[Alex & Rachel 78]

Ooh, hot cross buns!

I love those!

[Ban Hammer 13,352]

Ooh, hot cross buns!

I love those!

i gave those to nessa one morning, she didn't appreciate being spanked so she kicked my butt!

[almaty 19]

In the Czech Republic we have lotsa Easter traditions. At Easter it´s spring actually starting after snowey winter and everything starts getting green and flowery and stuff. One of the traditions is: guys go out and get 8 willow branches and weave a special stick out of it and on Easter Monday they go out (lil ones with their Dads usually and big ones with friends) and visit the houses of the girls they know and the girls get whipped a lil with the willow stick as the guys say an Easter poem or something and then the girls give them something (like coloured hardboiled eggs, chocolate eggs, bunnies, decorated Easter eggs, colourful ribbons for their willow sticks, etc...big boys like to get some booze )...also adult males visit the women within their family and do similar things ...the purpose of the whipping is that the fresh young branches are supposed to give new energy to the women and if they get whipped with it they won´t dry out by the next Easter. (Ofcourse like everywhere these days some people get lazy and actually get the stuff you can buy at stores for the whipping, which is wooden forks, dry willow branches sticks - nothing fresh at all, plastic stick...I refuse to get whipped by any of those cuz first it hurts more, second according to me there´s no point in supporting lazy guys and ruining the traditions). So in Czech Rep. families and friends get to see each other at Easter a lot

never would have thought of something like that! very interesting tradition. I think I will start it so I can go around spanking people with branches. hehe. watch out nessa!

On Good Friday, like every year, I go over to Mom's place and bake a trizillon Hot Cross Buns So that's more of an English tradition, I guess.

Since we have a Spanish background (Grandma is Catalan), we usually celebrate on Easter Monday rather than Easter Sunday - Grandma loves her paella, so I often make a giant paella with lots of sea food (prawn, mussels, fish, squid) plus chicken and sausages and on and on and on...This year I am making a lamb roast though - on a bed of rosemary, glazed with honey and seeded mustard.

Mom still makes basket full of choccies and eggs for me (that's more the German part of it), but she gave up on hiding the eggs for me (still upsets me LOL)

that all sounds so tasty! can I come?

Sure, as long as you bring the branches for a good spank...

hmmm some much deserved spankings go on at sister julie's...i am there

[Alex & Rachel 78]

I'm not doing anything this year, other than enjoying my five-day weekend and traveling down to London for my dad's birthday.

But one year my dad did an urban treasure hunt for us - we followed directional clues that were handed to us on a piece of paper - and ended up at the local chocolatier's where, upon giving a password to the lady behind the counter, we received an Easter chocolate basket each that my dad had prepaid for.

that soundslike so much fun! I wish my parents would have thought of things like that. so not creative!

I am very fortunate to have such wonderful parents and making treasure hunts is definitely a tradition I will try and pass down onto my children.

They can range from the very simple - having one person run ahead on a country walk and create a trail of arrows etched in the mud - to the more elaborate - my grandmother would create hunts for Christmas involving proper cryptic clues.

Ooh, hot cross buns!

I love those!

i gave those to nessa one morning, she didn't appreciate being spanked so she kicked my butt!

[Ms. Squirrel 11]

Ooh, hot cross buns!

I love those!

I was wondering - Can you get hot cross buns in the States? Or is it just a UK/OZ/NZ thing?

Buttery, doughy, fruity, sugary goodness! I wish they would sell them over here though, they are so much bloody work to make at home. I basically spend a whole day making buns and watching the dough raise. *yawn*

But it's soooooo worth it! I am sure each little sugardrenched bun has about a 1,000 calories LOL - but let me repeat: SO WORTH IT!!

that all sounds so tasty! can I come?

Sure, as long as you bring the branches for a good spank...

hmmm some much deserved spankings go on at sister julie's...i am there

This is what to expect, brother Dean!

[Scott & Lai 12]

You mean Easter is about the church?? I always thought it was about that alcoholic guy dressed as a deranged rabbit at the mall, giving away chocolate eggs.

It's about the Resurrection of Jesus. Take that out, and personally, I don't see the point.

Well, Cristians did snatch another day from Pagans however here, evident in the fact that Easter occurs the first Sunday after the full moon after the vernal equinox. If there is no set day for when the resurrection occurred, how can one be sure when it did or even IF it did.

Pagan traditions....

The hot cross buns Julie was talking about came about at the feast of Saxon fertility goddess Eoster. An ox was sacrificed and the horns became a symbol for the feast. They were carved into the bread called buns, which came from the word "boun"....sacred ox

Easter bunny & eggs came from the Norse Goddess Ostara, which represented fertility. The egg as a symbol of fertility and of renewed life goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Persians, who had also the custom of coloring and eating eggs during their spring festival.

Easter lilies represented fertility by the pagans.

The Easter sunrise service is derived from the ancient pagan practice of welcoming the sun on the morning of the spring equinox, marking the beginning of spring.

Actually, the date of the Christian celebration of Easter was originally tied to the date of the Jewish Passover. Later, many differing local dating traditions developed. It took a few centuries for the current dating method to be agreed upon. The concern wasn't about taking over a pagan festival, but establishing a unified practice. Sunrise services are a variant of the Holy Saturday Vigil, which recalls the period of Jesus' rest in the tomb. Since Jesus rose sometime before sunrise, the Vigil is seen as the first celebration of the Resurrection. Some churches prefer to have sunrise services in leu of the Saturday night vigil, partly to recall the visit of the women to Jesus' tomb.

I have no problem with Christians using some traditions which may have pagan origins, such as hot-cross buns, coloring eggs, etc. My point is that if the Resurrection of Jesus is taken out of the picture, those things really don't have much point, as I see it. "Easter" as the name of the Christian feast may or may not have its origin in the name of a Germanic goddess, but that really isn't relevant to what Christians are celebrating on that day. And if followers of other religions want to have their worship around the same time, that doesn't bother me.

Well i just found out hubby is pissed, he sd sunday is the catholic easter, which is what i celebrate, he sd the christian/baptist easter is April 27. So hes refusing to celebrate on sunday with me and the kids

The 27th of April is the date of Easter for Eastern Orthodoxy. In the west, this Sunday is Easter, and not just for Roman Catholics. I've never heard of there being a separate western date for Easter for Baptists....

[Sister Fracas 5]

Ooh, hot cross buns!

I love those!

I was wondering - Can you get hot cross buns in the States? Or is it just a UK/OZ/NZ thing?

Buttery, doughy, fruity, sugary goodness! I wish they would sell them over here though, they are so much bloody work to make at home. I basically spend a whole day making buns and watching the dough raise. *yawn*

But it's soooooo worth it! I am sure each little sugardrenched bun has about a 1,000 calories LOL - but let me repeat: SO WORTH IT!!

yep, we have them here... mmmm

[Amby 490]

julie do you have a recipe you could share for the buns? I'd like to try to make some for our massive feast on saturday. something different and my husband would probably appreciate it too!

[Nessa 23]

what's hot cross buns?

[Amby 490]

see the photo a few posts up of the bread with the "x" cut into them?