Easter Traditions

[Azure]

What are your Easter traditions (I'm thinking non-religious)? We never had any as a child - no egg hunts etc - and I've no idea what the Easter bunny is meant to do / represent. I would love to start some traditions with my son, but am clueless. I still get an Easter egg from my parents, though!

we were in germany a couple of years ago and everyone seemed to decorate their gardens with chocolates for passing children - who'd go around with baskets/tubs to carry them in. it was truly wonderful, everyone smiling and being generous.

like you, as a child we just had chocolate eggs & occasionally went to mass with my nana. just sent my niece a book as I know she'll have lots of eggs.

We follow my dh's fmily tradition of going 'Easter Bunnying'. The Easter Bunny leaves Mini Eggs on the path of a walk (Daddy walking in front if you cant do it in advance) and we all get a little paper cup to collect them in. SO far our children are so small that we have done it in the garden, but this year we are going for a walk up the hill near our home.
We also paint eggs and roll the down the hill which is great fun, seeing whose will go furthest, and trying to do something clever with the decoration.

I blew some eggs last year and then painted them and hung them on a branch, then this year have blown a few more, so that each year the kids can make new ones and it doesn't matter if they get broken. Also have just finished making choc eggs for my kids and dh, thy're really easy to do and at least I'm not filling the coffers of Mars and Nestle, and you don't have all that bl**dy packaging! We usually have an Easter Egg hunt in the garden, make the kids go inside and then put the little foil wrapped ones all over the place, then they each have a little basket/bowl, collect them up and then share them out equally at the end. This year there is a farm near us where you can visit the lambs/chicks/calves etc so I think we will try and visit. Otherwise it will just be great to have 4 days with no school/work and just relax with the kids.

1. Make an Easter tree - branches of Forsythia this year stuck in vase and decorated with wooden eggs, bunnies, chicks

2. Made Easter biscuits and decorated by girls 3. Made easter choclate nests - shreddies, chocolate, mini eggs. 4. have an egg hunt in garden on Easter Sunday - all eggs shared out. 5. have blown some eggs and girls have painted and they are sitting very prettily in a decorated basket nest to the Easter "tree". 6.this year the girls decorated egg shaped bits of card and bunny shaped bits of card and I've threaded them on a string and hung them up. 7. Girls have made Easter cards for family.

we don't do ALL of this every year depends what time we have - we must have had lots of time this year....
Happy Easter..

We always dyed and decorated boiled eggs and then the Easter Bunny hid them in the yard overnight and we would wake up and have an egg hunt. We also had decorated baskets that we left out and the Easter Bunny would fill them with chocolates, sweets and little presents. A bit like stocking stuffers at Christmas. We would get up Easter morning and make ourselves sick on sweets and we'd dye so many eggs that we'd be eating egg salad for weeks!

The Easter bunny has its origin in pre-Christian fertility lore. The Hare and the Rabbit were the most fertile animals known and they served as symbols of the new life during the Spring season.
The bunny as an Easter symbol seems to have it's origins in Germany, where it was first mentioned in German writings in the 1500s. The first edible Easter bunnies were made in Germany during the early 1800s. And were made of pastry and sugar
The Easter bunny was introduced to American folklore by the German settlers who arrived in the Pennsylvania Dutch country during the 1700s. The arrival of the "Oschter Haws" was considered "childhood's greatest pleasure" next to a visit from Christ-Kindel on Christmas Eve. The children believed that if they were good the "Oschter Haws" would lay a nest of colored eggs.
The children would build their nest in a secluded place in the home, the barn or the garden. Boys would use their caps and girls their bonnets to make the nests . The use of elaborate Easter baskets would come later as the tradition of the Easter bunny spread through out the country.

And this:
n second century Europe, the predominate spring festival was a raucous Saxon fertility celebration in honor of the Saxon Goddess Eastre (Ostara), whose sacred animal was a hare.
The colored eggs associated with the bunny are of another, even more ancient origin. The eggs associated with this and other Vernal festivals have been symbols of rebirth and fertility for so long the precise roots of the tradition are unknown, and may date to the beginning of human civilization. Ancient Romans and Greeks used eggs as symbols of fertility, rebirth, and abundance- eggs were solar symbols, and figured in the festivals of numerous resurrected gods.
Pagan fertility festivals at the time of the Spring equinox were common- it was believed that at this time, when day and night were of equal length, male and female energies were also in balance. The hare is often associated with moon goddesses; the egg and the hare together represent the god and the goddess, respectively.
Moving forward fifteen hundred years, we find ourselves in Germany, where children await the arrival of Oschter Haws, a rabbit who will lay colored eggs in nests to the delight of children who discover them Easter morning. It was this German tradition that popularized the 'Easter bunny' in America, when introduced into the American cultural fabric by German settlers in Pennsylvania.

Ds is too young to do anything this year except visit a farm to see chicks, lambs and Easter bunnies, but want to have an egg hunt in the garden next year.

"I spent many years living alone and away from my family, so I didn't have much to do during Easter. However, for the last few years I have been living with my brother, and on the first Easter I was here, on the sly, I made him an Easter basket, a big chocolate bunny, marmalade, many eyes wrapped in colored cellophane. as in childhood. And it was a pleasure for him, he got a really stupid smile when he noticed her.
From that moment on, I cannot imagine my Easter without my family and kosher cruises, and if I am interested in you, then I advise you to get more info in this thread and you might want to celebrate in the same way"