How do you celebrate Easter?

[Romy]

Since we are all from different places, our traditions vary a lot. What do you do?

In Czech Republic - where I was born - we celebrated Easter Sunday and Monday. I think Germany has the same. On Sundays, the girls would decorate the eggs, which is a beautiful tradition, in some parts of the country, it's done by old traditional methods - wax techniques, scraping ( scrape not scrap LOL ) etc. The boys would make braided whips from young pussywillow twigs with ribbons on the top. The whips originated in pagan times, being whipped ( lightly) was supposed to bring youth and health. On Monday, the boys would go door to door and search for girls to whip them and in return, they would get eggs from them. This part I always hated - being whipped and my beautiful artistic eggs smashed in their bags!!!:bawl:
Here in US, sometimes I decorate the eggs, no egg hunts, no whipping yey!
The pictures are from internet, not my creations !:)
http://img.radio.cz/pictures/velikonoce/foto/vejce14.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cb/Velikonočn%C3%AD_vaj%C3%ADčka_malovaná_voskem.jpg/800px-Velikonočn%C3%AD_vaj%C3%ADčka_malovaná_voskem.jpg
http://www.myczechrepublic.com/images/photos/jeffshanberg/prague/easter-pomlazka.jpg
http://nd01.blog.cz/966/893/053a98eaea_43477751_o2.jpg

[Nicole P]

Wow, that is incredibly interesting!
Where I live (in the US) most of the Easter celebrations are associated with churches and so forth. We are Agnostic, so we do not celebrate Easter in the sense that it is a Christian based holiday (in the US at least). But my kids get lured in by the Easter eggs and Easter bunny,the commercial part of Easter that is. So we usually get them a small basket of candy, and either dye eggs or sometimes go on an egg hunt.

[sunnie2004]

We celebrate it more like a family holiday. We do say a prayer before dinner, but the little ones do a egg hunt and we giggle and eat way to much food and be bloated piggies the rest of the day and night LOL! We have easter baskets with candy and we hide them too.

[alicopter]

We have all the extended family over, and usually have a HUGE easter egg hunt with all the kids! We say a prayer before dinner, and most years go to the night church service too.

[Joyce]

We used to go over to my parents' house, my grandparents would come too and my mother would prepare a nice meal, but this year is the first year that we stayed at home.
Just chilling out, enjoying the sunshine :)

[mum2gnt]

How did we celebrate Easter (seeing as it's almost Tuesday already here!!) - simple hun - chocolate! We eat chocolate all day every day!! What's that? Oh sorry it must just be me then that does that!!! :25r30wi::rofl2:

[mum2gnt]

Hun the whipping girls for youth and health!!! I am sure give any old man a whip and a young girl and if he started whipping her he would feel the youth healthily rising inside him!!!!!!!!! :25r30wi::rofl2::25r30wi:

[Gemma]

We aren't religious here so the only way we celebrate Easter is with chocolate, not that I have ate much of it, yet! :D

[Romy]

that's how French celebrate Easter - with chocolate!! awesome tradition - better than whipping, eh?:)

[justjen]

Hun the whipping girls for youth and health!!! I am sure give any old man a whip and a young girl and if he started whipping her he would feel the youth healthily rising inside him!!!!!!!!! :25r30wi::rofl2::25r30wi:

OH MY WORD SUZIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :rofl2:

[Sophie]

I took Ava and Doug to Glasgow Cathedral Friday as I'm Christian (allthough I'm awful at actually attending churches or doing anything religious other than praying and Doug is agnostic I guess) and I thought it would be a fitting outing for the day. We also walked around the necropolis but that's just because I'm morbid... LOL I'm kidding it's actually really beautiful it's an ancient cemetry built on the hill next to the cathedral and you can see the whole city from the top. It's definitely not a tradition here though I might make it mine. Saturday we painted eggs. Sunday we did an indoor egg hunt because it rained and Monday I watched the greatest story ever told, but fell asleep just before the ending... I'm awful aren't I but it always made me cry as a kid so maybe it was meant to be.

When I was little I'd visit my dad at easter and we'd do a huge egg hunt at my step-grandfathers farm. The best bit was afterwards my step-brother, step-sister and I didn't want it to end so we'd each take turns hiding them again and find them all over he he.

xxx

[heatherbird]

Wow Romy that is fascinating! I love hearing about how other cultures celebrate things, it's so interesting! And those eggs are beautiful!

We're not religious, so we just do the commercial US Easter with the Bunny coming and bringing a basket of goodies. :) We usually go to my BFF's parents' house (in the country) and do an egg hunt, have a nice big meal, and enjoy the company! Our families live pretty far from us so we don't usually celebrate Easter with them. :)