How has Easter changed so much?

[PistachioTiramisu]

When I was a child (60s/70s) Good Friday was a day when you went early to buy Hot Cross Buns and this was the ONLY day you ate them. Otherwise, all the shops were closed, there were religious programmes on TV and a lot of people ate the traditional fish for dinner. Easter Saturday was a 'fun' day, buying nice food for Sunday. On Easter Sunday you probably were given a chocolate egg or two and had roast lamb for dinner. Again, there were religious programmes on TV. Easter Monday was a day for picnics, etc., but all the shops were still closed.

It seems a shame that the true meaning of Easter has more or less disappeared, having been overtaken by a mountain of chocolate in various shapes and forms, some people having Easter trees with decorations and other themed items. I saw one comment this morning (not on here) stating that 'Easter is for kids', echoing the nonsense that 'Christmas is for kids'. It is not - it's for everyone who wants to mark the event.

Judging by how many chocolate eggs, or should that be chocolate flavoured eggs, there were left in the supermarket the Easter Bunny has got more health conscious/stingy in a lot of households!

Thank you for this thread, OP and PPs; it prompted me to have a nice Easter Wikipedia orgy of Easter Trees ( there's a photo of a superb one), Franconian Osterbrunnen, Eostre, Egg Painting, Pace Egging and (I kid you not) Egg Shoeing.

Well yes obviously the Christians nicked it from somewhere.

But Easter as Easter stolen bits amalgamated is the most important festival of faiths which accept the New Testament bible.

Luckily nowadays people are free to follow ancient pagan festivals without ending up on a dunking stool. But that’s not exactly Easter. With Hot Cross Buns and the shops closing on Sunday.

You could argue that the spring chickens and bunnies are modern symbols of the pagan festival and the decorating of Easter trees with eggs are symbolising of new birth, emergence after a long winter.

So perhaps it is subconsciously a return to a more pagan festival within the modern world and distancing from the New Testament religion is a positive thing.

Hot Cross Buns remain firmly in the Jesus sacrifice camp though.

@frozendaisy Well yes obviously the Christians nicked it from somewhere.

Why "obviously" ??

Where is the evidence for that?

Whatever it meant for ancient pagans is irrelevant, for Christians Easter is the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection. The fact that when it was first celebrated, the feast of the Resurrection coincided with pagan celebrations doesn’t mean it was derived from them.
The Jewish Passover (on which Christ was crucified) also coincided with such celebrations, yet this didn’t mean it was pagan.

Happy to be of service. I miss the Osternbrunnen.

The first Easter in the UK was a bit of a cultural shock when shops were open on Good Friday. It’s a quite strict day of contemplation in Germany with an official ban on entertainment venues like clubs or discos.

Same in NZ.

Have you seen the well dressings in Derbyshire? Very different in style from the Osternbrunnen, and I think they start a bit later in the year.

It didn’t just coincide, they chose the date and adopted the pagan traditions so they could replace the native religion with Christianity in a way that would be more easily accepted.

It’s literally called Easter as in Eostre!

Passover is at the same time, so are you saying that's pagan ?!

I ate hot cross buns on Friday, went for a day and lunch out yesterday, cooked a lamb roast today for my adult DC and gave them an egg or chocolate each. I will watch a religious film this evening and tomorrow I will go the cinema. This is my traditional Easter, although the Monday activity can vary.

Commercialisation, Instagram, consumerism... everyone trying to outdo one another, spend more money than the next person etc etc

I hate it all, particularly the "Home Bargains" type of plastic tat

I don’t think it has changed much.

Been to packed services throughout Holy Week, lots of young people at all of them, incl children Easter Egg hunt in the churchyard after today's Easter Day service and more for kids at home after a roast lanb dinner. Easter egg hunt in the garden

Currently in Italy, Easter appears much bigger over here, people meeting with families etc. but even in Rome most things are open today

Shared rituals and celebrations are important for any society (which is why multiculturalism is damaging to society)

Easter/ Christmas etc are important markers in orientation for society, marking dates where everyone shares similar things.

Our DCs are grown up, and we don’t bother with Easter. It’s just ‘Sunday’ in our house. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I grew up in the late 70s/early 80s and we always had an Easter tree - we'd go for a long walk the weekend before Easter and find a 'good branch' and then pop it in a vase and decorate it with little chicks. I still do it now with my kids although we have some bunny decorations in addition to the little chicks.

Other than that we are quite calm - one or two chocolate eggs/bunnies, a nice roast on Easter Sunday and an egg hunt in the garden (again, something we did when I was little).

All the holidays can be as commercial or traditional as you want, or a mix of the two (disclaimer: I did buy Easter crackers this year because I thought it would be fun 😁)

Everything has become so commercialised and new things thrown in to celebrate too. It's positive to have events to look forward and celebrate with loved ones but all the over priced tat months before spoils the 'magic'.

Egg hunts, decorating trees etc has been part of the custom since I was young and have loved, plus the treats. However waking up to a huge display of presents and toys isn't necessarily. Xx

I honestly didn’t realise how over the top it had become until this year, when I started seeing posts on social media of parents buying their children an obscene amount of chocolate and toys. I suppose there’s probably a deeper reason why some parents feel the need to overcompensate with sugar and plastic—but each to their own.

Much to my horror, a mouse got into our eaves and found my DD’s Easter chocolates, which I only discovered last night. So this morning, she ended up with just one egg and five small ladybird chocolates for her Easter egg hunt. She was completely clueless to the mouse drama and has been as happy as anything all day.

A little reminder for me that childhood joy doesn’t need to cost much at all.

So the official numbers state 15% of people go to church over Easter https://yougov.com/en-gb/articles/33538-how-britons-celebrate-christmas-and-easter

although some sources say this has risen to c20%. So it’s around 3/3.5 times the total number of people who simply identify as Britains next largest religion of Islam.

Christian holiday celebrates the Resurrection, many traditions (eggs, bunnies) stem from ancient festivals celebrating spring renewal. I think people should be able to celebrate it however they choose. Agree with you though it does all seem very commercial, but that seems true of everything really.

Not sure how old you are but I'm in my 50's and don't remember Easter being like that as a kid. A chocolate egg and a roast dinner, usually lamb, and the lovely long weekend off school. Not that different to now, really, except that there were no Easter home decorations available back then.

If people want to follow the routine you described, they are free to. Nothing stopping you doing that with your family at all.

What is unreasonable is expecting everyone else to do the same, or suggesting that because everyone doesn't that we have 'lost' something as a Nationm.

We are not a majority Christian country. We are majority agnostic. Our Pagan ancestors celebrated Easter before we were even invaded by Christians.

A forced re-branding of a traditional festival to be about Jesus is not, IMO, the 'true meaning' of it, the same as Chriistmas.

I'm not offended by the Christian stories being told on tv, but selling it as 'the truth' is disingenuous. Religion re-writing history isn't OK, IMO.

I'm glad Easter is, for most, about eggs and bunnies because that is our heritage.

We argue all the time about 'what it means to be English' because so many of our traditions were taken from us. Let's be happy that we have thee few things left.

Not a Christian here so it is just a bank holiday. I spent part of the morning doing admin for my business and have been gardening.

If people want to buy chocolate and decorations I am sure that is acceptable, nobody needs to do the religious bit unless they want to. I suspect Easter has morphed into more of a spring event for a lot of people. Many of the traditions are to do fertility symbolism which pre-date Christianity anyway.

So today we've been to church, swapped presents including chocolate eggs, had lamb cooked with Rosemary now watching James Bond and eating chocolate.

Good Friday was fasting except for hot cross buns then fish pie in the evening. Yesterday was baking and prep for today.

I think people are just a bit shy sometimes about how they truly celebrate Easter.

All holidays seem to be becoming less and less… holiday-y, iykwim.

I don’t know if it’s because their religious aspect is diminishing or is simply the passage of time and things evolve, but even Christmas has been feeling less Christmas-y for me lately. I’m not even religious myself, I just notice that it feels different.