Athiest Easter

Happy Easter everyone!!  It's a lovely spring day in Minnesota.  The sunshine is well received after days of dreary weather.  Although this is considered a religious holiday for most, the resurrection of Jesus, it isn't for me: no church, no Sunday dresses, no huge family get-togethers.  It's just me, my family, and the Easter Bunny.

Actually, why the Easter Bunny is connected with this Christian holiday is still unclear.  The Easter bunny, coloring eggs, etc. has roots in hidden deep in pagan traditions (as does the Christmas tree, but who's counting).  The bunny is a sign of fertility and new life, hence the phrase, "breeding like rabbits".  Bunnies can also superfetate, which means they can conceive a new batch of babies before the first batch is even born.  Easter traditions started in pre-christian Germany.  Children would hide their bonnets or caps in secure locations (hence the hiding) and if they were good, they would get little treats hidden in their "nests', oftentimes made out of sugar and pastry. 

Easter eggs also originated in pre-Christian culture, but became more important in Christian Easter celebrations.  They were usually colored red and green.  Red was for the blood of Christ.  Green was the coming of life after the long hard winter.  The shell symbolized his tomb, so cracking it represented the resurrection.  Egg traditions vary greatly all around Europe, from egg hunting to the Egg Dance, to the highly decorative Ukrainian eggs.

The Easter Bunny, originally Hare, immigrated with the Germans to Pennsylvania, traditions were picked up by confectioneries, and the Easter Basket was commercialized.

My family's traditions go like this:  My grandparents would come up from Wisconsin to visit us.  The day before we would color and dye eggs.  On Easter morning, my family wakes up and goes automatically into the Easter basket search.  When we were younger, it was easier and has progressively gotten harder over the years.  If I recall correctly from family videos, my first basket was hidden under the dinning room table, which my sister's conveniently pulled out and pushed it until it was right in front of me.  This year it was so kindly wrapped in a plastic bag and hidden in planting soil by my older sister Annie.

 

 Here are the other hiding places for this year:

My dad's on top of the kitchen shelves.  He sometimes gets a little lazy when it comes to finding his basket.  This year he didn't find his until 2:00 in the afternoon.  It was still up there when I took this picture.

My mom's up in the pantry.  She was a bit slow on finding hers too.

My brother-in-law's hidden in his favorite board game, Ticket to Ride.  It's a pretty awesome game.  He did find it pretty fast though. . . darn it >_<

My eldest sister Katie's basket, hidden in Annie's dirty laundry.  She found hers pretty quick too, because she though, "That would be a good hiding place," and it was. . . it was.

Annie's. . . hahaha.  I hid this baby up in the florescent light of the entry way.  Forgive the lovely ceiling border.

When we were younger, we would then put on our coats and rain boots to search for Easter eggs.  We would always do pretty good, but often we missed one or two that we would find while playing hide and seek in July.  Since my sister's and I have grown older, that tradition kind of died out.

In the afternoon we have Easter dinner: ham, potatoes, the works.  We also do butsching, contest of the eggs.  The rules are one person holds there egg, point up.  The other person hits that point with the point of their egg.  Then butts to butts.  The winners are victorious.  The losers get made into egg salad sandwiches with sardines for dinner.  Delicious!!

All through the week, it's egg salad sandwiches and Easter candy.  Here are the perfect ingredients for a Easter basket is:
-whipped cream eggs
-cordial eggs
-Cadbury Creme Eggs
-Reeses
-Jelly Bellies
-Malted Milk eggs
-peeps
-milk and dark chocolate eggs
-Peeps
-small chocolate bunny
-regular fruit jelly beans

. . . I don't think I'm forgetting anything :)

Happy Easter everyone, however you celebrate it.  Laura signing out :)