Easter Rituals

[Kathryn]

Hello again all,

I really don't like Easter time! The Easter Bunny? (Bilby here) . . . please . . . The whole thing really bothers me; more so as the kiddies get older and my parenting ideologies strengthen. I turned a blind eye at Christmas time; Santa did visit. But it's all getting a little harder to sit with. Do I dare break such ingrained social conditionings? Would love as much help and advice I can get with this one!

Thanking you all in advance -- I REALLY appreciate this forum; thanks for sharing!

[Jen H.]

We've always treated Santa and the Easter Bunny as nice stories, but not the real thing.

When my oldest was four or five she asked me if Santa was real. We came to an understanding that I didn't believe in Santa (I wouldn't lie to her about it), but she could if she wanted to (seeing as he was such a nice idea). She chose to believe in him for two or three more years.

At eight she's stopped believing in Santa, but she still believes in magic and fairies.

The easter bunny has never had the same draw as Santa, so we've never had any child choose to believe in it.

As far as Easter rituals, we've always done easter baskets and egg dying and hiding plastic eggs. Sometimes one or the other of my daughters have chosen to help me hide the eggs.

We have lots of fun, and the kids love Easter, we just haven't given the Easter Bunny credit for all the gifts and eggs.

Jen H. (DD8, DD6, DS3)
http://crazychicknlady.livejournal.com/

[Sandra Dodd]

I didn't make up any Santa or tooth fairy stories. I didn't embroider or elaborate at all. If they asked I'd say "When I was little, I'd put my tooth under my pillow and there would be money. You should try it." or "All I know is if you put a stocking up there might be stuff in it in the morning."

I didn't do any such Easter bunny stuff. I'd hide eggs before they woke up, but they knew I hid them. Usually they had helped color them. Or I'd hide plastic ones with a coin in each, and wherever the "prize eggs" were (eggs with a dollar bill in), I would put all three in one place, and each child just got one and left the others for the other two kids.

[Trisha Cronin]

I wasn't really clear about what it was you didn't like about these holidays. Is it just the deception? I think kids can have a wonderful time without being lied to. I've tried to be as honest with my boys as they need me to be. Deacon, who is four, often asks if things are real, like Santa and ghosts etc. I just tell him whether I believe in them or not, but that other people might think differently, and that I don't really know for sure. Because I don't think we can be 100% sure about many things. There's alot of stuff I don't know and haven't seen. But they still love Christmas and Santa, and Deacon's looking forward to the tooth fairy, and doesn't seem to care that she's probably not real.

Just in general about the holidays, my mom never was really interested in them, partly for religious reasons and partly because she doesn't like the fuss. I did my best as a child to make a big deal out of them, because I loved all the decorating etc. But it hurt that someone I loved seemed to vaguely disapprove of something I loved.

Trisha

[Monica Manzano]

This is one of those family holiday's which made more sense then than now. I grew up with a large extended family. Every year we'd go to Grandma's or Greatgrandma's for fun and food. Well after Church of course.

Leading up to this for months and months we'd collect hollowed out egg shells. At our house, gm's and ggm's you'd always find egg crates full of empty egg shells. It was quite a task on your fine motor skills to attempt to make and egg but leave only a little hole in the egg shell. About 1 week or more before Easter there is this big chore of decorating, drying and filling the egg shells with confetti.

Without the extended family it's harder, takes more rationalizing, to do these traditions. It isn't as much fun without all of the people and interactions. This represents one of those 'out of context' situations to me. We don't do some of these things any more. I don't know how the neighbors would feel if we chased them down to crack a confetti egg over there head. Some of the new neighbors, from India, may get really scared. This needs explaining and then it's no fun either to have to ask "may I crack an egg over your head?" Defeats the whole purpose of the surprise.

Oh, and there is a right and wrong way to do this. You turn the egg sideways. If you crack one up and down it hurts much more. For the littler children, you might pre-crack it and do it softly.


Cascarones or confetti eggs are festive, hollow chicken egg shells, filled with confetti, meant to be thrown or broken over someone's head(usually as a surprise from behind), scattering confetti all over the person. Breaking the eggs over someone's head can be painful if done hard enough, but since the eggshells are so brittle no one normally gets hurt. This tradition is most often carried out among friends and family. Cascarones derived from Mexico and have recently regained popularity in the southwestern United States. They are used for many different occasions but, especially Easter. Having one broken over your head is said to bring good luck.

In the movie West of the Pecos (1945) the eggs are used to throw at the one you love and this person must dance the next dance with you.

Easter egg

[edit] External links
Cascarones Instructions from ZOOM
Cascarone Crazy
El Paso times article
About.com/Austin
The Monitor article (West Rio Grande Valley Newspaper)
South Arizona Folk Arts, University of Arizona
http://www.caller2.com/specials/2007/easter/index.html
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascarones"

[Carie Kowalski]

This is the first holiday that my son(6.5) has asked me if The Easter Bunny is real.
I asked him, what do you think? He said no. I agreed with him and asked him if he wanted to pretend still, he said yes. We're a very open family, but we also love fantasy. We've treated all the make pretend holiday icons as such.
My daughter is 20 months younger. I'm not sure what she thinks. She loves to act and pretend, so I have a feeling that these make pretend characters for her are truly that.
She seems less surprised with the difference between fantasy and reality.
We're really open and honest with eachother about everything as a family. I, too have wondered when the Santa question will pop up.
I think now, Santa is the only pretend "icon" we have left....
We also talk about easter/ostara as the re-birth of the earth. The kids physically see the earth being reborn in the spring. The egg is the symbol of life dating back B.C.
We are organic gardeners. This year the kids and I started seedlings in egg shells that we saved.
The idea of starting new life in the symbol of life is really what Easter/Ostara is about for them.
I guess we're lucky that this season has always encompased growth and life.
The jelly beans are good, but secondary.. :~)
~Carie

[Meredith]

We've always treated Santa as just another story character - Mo talks to Clifford and Spongebob and plays games with Dora and Blue, and sometimes Santa. She did start to ask if he was "real" after being asked by other kids if she "Believed" I swear they asked in bold type just like that, too! So I talked about "the Santa game" and asked if she wanted to play. She was sort of offended at that point, I think by the idea that her friends weren't told it was a game, so I dropped the matter. She was furious when it didn't snow this past Christmas (we live in TN) - much more upset about that than the Santa game. Allllllllll the Christmas propaganda shows snow. In years past she hasn't had a good grasp of the calender, so whenever it snowed, it was Christmas. One year we had four of them!

We've never done anything at all about Easter, and there's a lot more controversy about the Easter bunny in my local area - baskets and eggs are fine, but its about Jesus, not rabbits. So there isn't the big "Do you Believe?" issue with the bunny. For some reason, Santa's a whole different ball game.

[Meredith]

I did my best as a child to make a big deal out of them, because I loved all the decorating etc. But it hurt that someone I loved seemed to vaguely disapprove of something I loved.

We've always done a bunch of decorating - in addition to calender holidays Mo likes to declare birthdays sort of at random for the sake of decorating the house. She doesn't like to have real parties, but likes to throw pretend parties with all the trimmings.

[Rain Fordyce]

I love this discussion... check out my post:
Fertility Rituals and Just Welcoming Spring

I agree... it's a good practice to do what symbolizes your authentic life, and not just follow traditions that you don't agree with.

We celebrated what we did because the boys asked for it, though I kept it to a minimum and we had a nice conversation about why. My oldest really enjoyed deciding why he liked the treasure hunt and getting money and candy, as though it was just another fun time of the year, like a birthday.

Yes, Always Dare! That is the exciting part of the journey!
Have fun,
Rain

[Sarah]

I'm not Mormon but my husband is, so religious holidays are interesting. This is the first year I've thought about whether or not to 'do Easter'.

I want to do the fun stuff, like egg hunts and celebrating spring coming in, but not focusing on the religious aspect. One of my favorite bloggers gave me a great idea for next year. She does spring celebrations - including baskets - on the first day of spring, before Easter.

That gives me a nice jumping off point for planning our holiday next year. Since the majority of my family and all of my husband's family are very, very religious, I keep my kids informed about their beliefs and traditions (mostly to try to fend off active proselyting by family members) and I want to give them exciting options for celebrating holiday seasons so that they don't fall back on religion just for the fun, exciting parts.

[Michelle Hannah]

I used to really go overboard with Easter baskets and candy and this year (maybe I'm just burned out with it) I decided to get expensive pretty baskets (empty ones) and let my girls use them for hunting candy filled eggs at my sister's house (she hid 210 eggs for 5 kids).

That was Saturday and the kids had a great time but you should have heard my family members saying how sad it was that I didn't fill my kids' baskets with loads of junk. Then yesterday my mother stopped by with two huge bags filled with plastic nonsense and even more candy (I just smiled and thanked her), but it irked me.

I have nothing against the Easter bunny but I think holidays in general are taken to an extreme in this country ( I blame Wal-Mart lol).

[Cheryl]

Pagan religion =The name "Easter" originated with the name of an ancient Goddess. She was the Great Mother Goddess a goddess of fertility. You can look it up on your computer, her statues still stand today in Europe.Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre."

God condemns the practice of Easter-type worship and calls it an abomination
Easter was celebrated by pagans in their worship of their Gods and Goddesses thousands of years before Jesus Christ was born
True Christians are commanded to observe the Christian Passover, not Easter

You should go by the solar (Jesus) not the lunar(Satan) True Passover begins 15 days after the spring equinox not by the 1st full moon so that made Passover this year on the 4 of April 2009.

[Meredith]

"I want to do the fun stuff, like egg hunts and celebrating spring coming in, but not focusing on the religious aspect. "

You can do egg hunts any time, you know. Have one every day if you like. Stock up on plastic eggs during the easter clearance sales and use them for treasure hunts year round. Fill them with anything at all - I've put silly things like shaving cream or pebbles or broken parts of toys in eggs just for fun.

We celebrate spring by the simple expedient of picking flowers and putting them in vases. Its very impromptu, but we also end up collecting vases at yardsales so we have more ways to display flowers at different times of the year.