Easter Sunday as family event like Xmas day?

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When I was younger, we celebrated Easter very similar to Christmas Day with extended family members.

For various reasons now I don’t see it as any kind of special family day.
My kids are with their father. It’s a normal Sunday to me (Plus chocolate obviously).
Even if kids were here, it would still be a fairly normal Sunday

Am I alone in this ?

1.4% of the UK population went to church Easter Sunday 2023. Most weeks it’s 1%. So no, not ‘normal’ in that sense. Only 300,000 more than the normal tiny number!

Do I live in another realm altogether? nobody I know decorates for Easter. My eyes have been opened!

And they’re all on mumsnet 😂

I’m from the big smoke so it was uncommon for anyone in my working class community to go to church tbh, Easter was just a big piss up if anything. I think it’s nice to have a dinner, family thing though.

@HardyKoala I think you may be looking at the stats just for Church of England church attendance, which makes up less than half of regular church attendance in this country.

There's also a very recent report (and a bit in the media about this) which suggests that more and more people are going to church, so about 12% of the population overall say they go to church at least once a month, and that becomes even higher among 18-34 year olds.

The report is here, and yes, 12% seems surprisingly high to me thinking about the people I know, but it's based on two large YouGov polls and I can't immediately see that it's massively flawed or anything.

The point is, yes obviously going to church is a minority pursuit but it's not completely unheard of. There's no need to be quite so dismissive.

I think the branches with painted eggs is an Eastern European/austrian tradition and a lovely one.
Our cathedral was packed to the rafters today

@AleaEim - I’m from the north side of Dublin - very working class area - it was definitely a big thing when I was growing up. But I’m probably a lot older than you. Was it not a big thing at school?

My Easter decorations. I have a few other bits dotted about.

Before I divorced we spent it with ex’s family who came from abroad we did dinner and family time. Now the kids go and spend it with their dad and his family and I treat it like a normal Sunday.

I thinknlile many things, you will find that it varies from family to family. Surely you can understand that for some, Easter will have special religious or cultural connotations that will mean they.choose to do different things to make it special. It is also attached to a bank holiday which gives a different feel to a Sunday. Likewise others will.never have felt it to be a special day and so it will go unmarked. I really despair that this isn't obvious to most people. We're different and choose to live our lives differently!!
I imagine because of the the Christian background to our country, that it will be a set apart day for many...especially as lots of shops are closed and there is a bank holiday. Personally, it is always a special day for me and my family but I can absolutely understand that other people may do it differently!! Either way, it doesn't really matter what other people do....we have a choice!!

I think that’s so cute 🥰

Yes we did too when I was a child. Don't even have a roast these days tbh. It's just like any other Sunday

I don't really remember Easter egg hunts when I was a kid but maybe we did. Easter was always a roast lamb dinner and a bit special, plus chocolate eggs obvs. With my kids we've always done egg hunts here and often at my parents too. Tradition now seems to be I buy little eggs / lindt bunnies and do an egg hunt, grandparents buy a big egg each. Never did real belief in the Easter Bunny tho, they've always known it was me hiding the eggs. Kids are teens now but still did an egg hunt!

Not always lunch with the grandparents, sometimes just tea and cake but would usually see them over the weekend.

Very nice ☺️❤️

We make it a special family day, with a big lunch, and an egg hunt rather than presents under the tree

Growing up in the 90s it was like you describe for our family. Now it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t, last year we had a family day with my mum and in laws, this year DH, DD and I have gone away for the weekend.

Some people have a lunch, we did this year but don't every year.

It’s a family day here. It’s what you make it.

That reminds me of the saying I heard when I lived in Italy, 'Natale con i tuoi, Pasqua con chi vuoi'. Christmas with yours (family), Easter with whomever you want.

@HardyKoala I really hope you’re not just picking for an argument on a lovely thread about the different things Easter means to people and how we mark it?

55% of people in this country don’t recognise themselves as Christian
Respectfully, so what? It doesn’t change anything. Easter remains a Christian festival. If your way of marking it is to give chocolate eggs to your DC and do the occasional egg hunt, then great. You do what’s best for you. But you asked what we would be celebrating. If you don’t want to use it as a reason to get together with family etc, then the only other reason to celebrate will be the resurrection of Jesus.

Christian’s are a minority now
Nope. Christians are still the majority faith in the UK and they don’t become a minority faith simply because you’ve bundled all the other religions, agnostics and atheists together. That would be a misleading interpretation of the stats.

Even if you do want to categorise them that way, it’s a Christian festival and a large number of the 37.75% of people with no faith will be acknowledging it in some respect, be it treating it as a reason to get together with loved ones to have a roast lamb dinner (lamb representing Jesus, the sacrificial lamb of God) or allowing their children to take part in Easter celebrations at school, eating chocolate eggs, or even just having the bank holidays off work.

Christianity: Approximately 46.53% of the UK population identifies as Christian, making it the largest faith group.

No religion: A large portion, 37.75%, identify as having no religious affiliation.

Islam: Islam is the second largest religion in the UK, with 5.97% of the population identifying as Muslim.

Other Religions: Hinduism (1.59%), Sikhism (0.79%), Buddhism (0.43%), and Judaism (0.41%) make up smaller percentages of the population.

Not Stated: A further 5.91% do not state their religious affiliation in the census.

It's never been a big family event for me, we aren't religious at all but we'd celebrate Christmas with presents and decorations. As a child Easter was just about getting an Easter egg and some time off school. With my own dcs, it's usually time spent as a family as DH has time off work, but we don't see extended family, and it's only slightly different with some commercial Easter themed events at an activity centre.

Not really a special day 🤔 walk with the dog , coffee out , nice dinner but we had fish ( don’t eat lamb or other red meat ) .
When the children were younger and were on Easter break from school, we might head to visit relatives who are too far to regularly visit or we would be away for a short holiday .

If you are not religious, why would Easter Sunday, or Chrirtmas Day for that matter, be any different from any other Sunday. From a religious point of view Easter Sunday is more important than Christmas Day.

Why would you need a roast dinner on a hot day.
A barbecue has not been mentioned.

Not as big an event as Christmas but we do make an effort - we just had my mum for lunch today as my dbro and his family are away but the dcs make an effort to be around and when they were younger we would make an event of it with an egg hunt etc.