Easter traditions from when you were little?

[Britpopbaby]

New outfit or ‘Rig out’ as my gran would call it

Dad would come home from work on Thursday before Good Friday with presents. I remember one year he had a raincoat on and handed us lots of little packets of sweets stored in his coat pockets. One packet at a time until they ran out. And a comic like TV Comic or similar. Another year it was a fun book each and another an LP record.

Then Easter morning a chocolate egg on the table each. And mum would have done boiled eggs and toast soldiers with the egg under an egg cozy and a face on felt tipped on it.

Then watching loads of Easter TV.

I was young in the 70s. We weren't a religious family (nor was anyone else where I grew up) so no church.

Easter meant hot cross buns the week before Easter and Easter eggs on the day. Nothing else but having lots of chocolate was enough to make it very exciting.

I remember being at primary school and reading an American story which mentioned the Easter Bunny. I had no idea what it was on about.

Now, the Easter Bunny seems to have become so widespread that children don't realise that it's a comparatively new tradition

Does anybody know when it spread from the US to the UK?

It means 'outfit'. I'm familiar with it from growing up in Ireland.

West Yorkshire here and we also had new 'rig outs" but at Whitsuntide not Easter. Ah, memories of my new Whitsy frilly frocks

NE Scotland and "rigout" was a phrase when I was young. Usually used for a new outfit for a specific occasion but never Easter.

Just eggs! Not fussed about Easter - just enjoy it for the long weekend!!

In the week running up, we decorated a boiled egg for a competition, had an Easter bonnet parade at school/church, received Easter eggs, made Easter gardens at Sunday school and often made cornflake crispy buns with mini eggs inside. On Easter Sunday we had roast lamb with family.

Church. Lots and lots of Church. Boiled eggs and soldiers for breakfast. And an Easter egg hunt (a tradition I've carried on for my children)

My children are growing up with much nicer traditions as we moved to a country with different traditions- on Palm Sunday they dress up as Easter Witches (the traditional old woman wise woman kind of witch, wearing a shawl over the head and rosy cheeks or freckles with face paint not the Halloween kind of witches, though some children dress as bunnies instead these days) and go door to door with decorated pussy willow sticks and give them to people while reciting a blessing for the coming year, in exchange for chocolate, sweets or money. I love it, a proper old tradition that is still being kept up.

Roast lamb for dinner.
An Easter egg hunt round the house and garden.

Fish on Good Friday (usually fish fingers if I’m honest) hot cross buns in abundance, Easter eggs on the Sunday, and a lamb roast dinner. Nothing on the Monday.
Relatives would buy me a little present, usually involving chocolate or fluffy chicks, sometimes there was a Simnel cake. When I look back, it always seemed warm and sunny, though I doubt this was true for every Easter!

I grew up in Germany:

Fish or Struwen (a sweet yeast pancake with raisins) on Good Friday.

Saturday was cleaning the house, decorating the Easter tree (branches of pussy willow or forsythia) with painted blown eggs and maybe do some new eggs.
Colouring hard boiled eggs.

Sunday was easter egg hunt in the garden or house (if it was wet), we each had to find two filled baskets, one bunny and some other chocolate figures. No big eggs in Germany for children, they are presents for adults, children get a large heaps of small items.

Pork roast for lunch

Easter Monday was often about visiting family (and getting another chocolate bunny) or my parents hosted for coffee and cake.

Toasted Hot Cross Buns for breakfast.
An Easter egg.

No roast or anything - parents hate / hated them..

Hot cross buns on Good Friday, followed by church

Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday (before they became a "thing" in the UK). My parents would hide the eggs around the garden while we were at Sunday school.

We also used to get a small gift such as a pair of socks hidden in a large cardboard egg.

Nothing. I do remember we got chocolate eggs once, but usually there was nothing that wasn’t a normal day.

Faffing about with palm leaves made me laugh 😂

We'd dye hard boiled eggs with mum 😊 and dad would make roast lamb

Yes we'd also dye boiled eggs using onion skins, gorse flowers etc, wrapped up in a cloth with string so the they were next to the egg.

Giving up chocolate for Lent. Decorating the Easter tree. Chocolate eggs. Palm crosses. The Great Escape on TV if we were at my Grandmother's.

Easter box. Mum got an old cardboard box each from the supermarket and we had to paint it and decorate it with tissue paper etc for the Easter bunny to put our eggs in.
In hindsight it was a good and cheap way to keep us occupied during the school holiday while waiting for Easter.

A Buttons or Smarties Easter egg or a cheap small Easter egg in an egg cup or mug.

Oh yes, the eggs in a mug!
My DS had one of these every year from my brother.

Do they still produce them? ( I’m well past the buying of Easter eggs, so don’t know, and DS is 40 ) They were usually a smarties egg.

My lovely Dad would hide Easter Eggs in the garden - one each for two DBs and me, each one in different colour foil wrapping. We would rush round looking for them on Easter morning and it was really fun. Hot cross buns on Good Friday and fish for dinner, special roast lunch - usually lamb with mint sauce on Easter Sunday, and Easter biscuits (never see them now - round and flat with zig-zag edges) for Sunday tea. We did lots of crafts like painting eggs and making special hats covered in real flowers or paper ones.

My Dad would say 'rig out' (Glaswegian) as in "Oh you're off out - is that a new rig out?"

Lamb and mint sauce , New potatoes
Chocolate egg back in the days when the sweets were inside the egg in a brown plastic bag
And Church/Sunday School ( because we went every week)

Hot cross buns were only available at Easter, we only had them on Good Friday, for breakfast. I remember going very early with my father to the baker to get some -,still warm from the oven. 😋. And Easter Eggs only on Easter Sunday, but that was pretty normal then - back in the Dark Ages - I think.

I don’t remember anything out of the ordinary. Church, but we went most Sundays anyway.

Easter bonnets at school. If we were lucky we’d win an Easter egg at some point, but they were never deliberately bought.

no “traditions” egg hunts or anything.