okay, so this isn’t ACTUAL easter stuff, but the accessory easter stuff that i want to talk about. good old-fashioned, secular, commercialized easter stuff. NO, i’m not about to embark on a rant, so you can keep reading…
i suppose there’s just as much variation among families w/ christmas stuff of this sort, but i’m always curious about people’s traditions, especially because they seem so different. some people i know are full-on ‘easter bunny believers’. they treat the easter bunny much like santa claus, w/ the filling of baskets and hiding of eggs and all that being attributed solely to the easter bunny. their kids are convinced that the easter bunny is real and responsible for all of that stuff. there are people who have their kids pictures taken every year w/ a shopping mall easter bunny. there are people who do only candy in easter baskets. there are families who hide the easter baskets. there are families who do HUGE easter baskets full of lots of presents. some people don’t do easter baskets at all. there is just so much variety!
i suppose i do with my kids, mainly what my parents did with me when i was a kid. i don’t ever remember being under any impression that anyone other than my parents put stuff in my easter basket. i don’t remember ever getting candy, really, although sometimes i would get a chocolate bunny. i did get a goldfish once, though (in a fishbowl, of course).
with my kids, i’ve traditionally tried to get them some fun little stuff that is something they’ll actually use. ie, not a bunch of crap trinkets that will end up getting tossed a week later when they aren’t looking. sometimes i get them stuff they need, like socks. like my parents, i NEVER do candy. they get enough of that everywhere else, they don’t need to get it from me too. as far as the easter bunny is concerned, i don’t think my kids have ever even heard of the easter bunny. maybe shane, but i don’t know. we usually do baskets in the morning, before church, but i remember waiting one time when we did easter dinner w/ joe and mary so the kids could could all open their baskets at the same time. usually, later in the day we will do an easter egg hunt of sorts. if the weather is nice, we’ll do it outside. lately, my mom has been putting money in the eggs (coins) which is kind of cool for the kids, but other than that, it’s just finding the eggs. OH, and it’s always plastic eggs. my poor, deprived children have never dyed easter eggs. i know! bad mom! but honestly, i just can’t justify it. no one in my house will eat hard-boiled eggs, so i’m not going to waste a couple dozen eggs just so they can color them and then throw them away. they don’t really know they’re deprived though, since they don’t even know they should be doing it. oh well!
so anyway, what do you do? is this your own tradition? did you inherit it from your parents? borrow it from a friend? feed my curiosity!
I usually do an Easter basket for each kid. Some years, we hide them, others we don't. I put in things they need that are spring or summer things like flip flops, swimsuits, tshirts. Also stickers, playdoh or other little things like that. Usually if there is a cheap little movie or something in my stash I throw that in too. I have always tried to do a new plate and cup for them too and get rid of the one from the year before but I don't know if we will be doing that this year. I haven't found any that I love.
ReplyDeleteI have always done egg dyeing but we love hardboiled eggs so it is never a waste. I don't know that we have ever made a big deal about the Easter bunny. I know that they know it's us that do the baskets but we pretend that its the bunny.
I do give them a little candy but we don't go anywhere or have family so it is the only candy that they get. Usually I get one kind except for Joe who gets Cadbury eggs. :)
I honestly don't remember what my parents did for us as kids. I just kind of copy the Christmas stocking experience with season appropriate things. :) (Longest comment ever award goes to me!)
It's all commercial for us. Growing up in England, we got chocolate easter eggs because they were there in the stores (not like a Chinese immigrant like my mom knew them as anything other than treats that come during that bank holiday time.) For my kids, they see the Easter baskets, dye kits etc in the store, as well as what all their friends are doing and want the same. We've done the egg dyeing because Ella is all about arts and crafts and this was just another one of those things, but this year I'm determined not to do them because of the waste - We eat eggs, but I can't bring myself to eat dyed eggs (I'm imagining all the deadly dyes seeping into my egg, haha), plus, we usually have to leave the eggs on display for a indeterminate amount of time anyway... Oh, and we'll do egg hunts just because they're fun (Not something I ever did as a kid). Although I don't like the big traditional hunts because everyone has to scramble to get a few eggs - and invariably the bigger faster kids get millions of eggs and littler ones get not very many. Particularly annoying is when people don't follow egg limit rules :-) So I prefer those where you go from station to station... still a hunt, no?! Oh, and no Easter baskets either - I don't believe we have this tradtion in England, so I don't really want to start this up! (Not that Ella's not tried...) Did I cover everything??
ReplyDeleteChocolate Chocolate Chocolate!
ReplyDeleteLike Pei has said it's all about chocolate eggs! Christmas is taken down in the stores and the shleves are filled with chocolate Easter eggs! This year I have bought pillow cases and added a t-shirt and a small amount of choc and an egg cup for my kid's Easter gifts this year BUT we have just received a 'red cross' ;) parcel from the UK of Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate!! Easter Sunday is a day for eating... Chocolate! Commercial YES Religious... unfotunately NO!
In England it certainly felt much more religious and we all knew the true meaning of Easter and it was a time for families to get together and spend quality time and we celebrated Easter for the religious reasons not so much the commercial. We were taught it at school and Easter bonnets were made and egges were dyed and kids went to church and... well I think it is a lot more low key here in the US but I think that is because of the same old same old regarding celebrating religious occasions just like Christmas and that is a shame! But don't get me on that soap box ;)
Anyway Happy Easter Dapelo family and to all your followers!!!
Hugs!!