• Welcome to Autism Forums, a friendly forum to discuss Aspergers Syndrome, Autism, High Functioning Autism and related conditions.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Private Member only forums for more serious discussions that you may wish to not have guests or search engines access to.
    • Your very own blog. Write about anything you like on your own individual blog.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon! Please also check us out @ https://www.twitter.com/aspiescentral

What are the Easter traditions that children and families have in your culture?

Yeshuasdaughter

Yeshuasdaughter

You know, that one lady we met that one time.
V.I.P Member
In the USA, growing up, my household was not typical. We weren't Christian, but we still celebrated Easter, at least in a cultural way.

The day before Easter, I would often go to a park with my Christian grandmother, where there would be an Easter egg hunt, hosted by The Easter Bunny himself. We'd get home, and boil and decorate Easter eggs.

On Easter morning I would wake up and in the kitchen, there would be an Easter basket, filled with wonderful plasticky grass. On top of the grass, there would be hardboiled eggs that I colored with my mother or grandmother the day before. On top of the eggs, there would be tons and tons of candy.

In our country, it is The Easter Bunny that brought the Easter basket. Aside from its important religious value, it's the first of the two big cultural "candy holidays". Easter and then later in the year, Halloween.

*********

My daughter is nineteen. But The Easter Bunny is cool. He understands that teenagers are just really tall kids. He made sure and brought her an Easter basket. But it was just a grocery bag from a Chinatown shop. Inside the bag:

Matcha flavored Pocky
2 Alona chocolate bars from Russia
A bag of buckwheat (my daughter's favorite cereal)
A box of Hello Panda chocolate filled cookies

We just had a breakfast of cheesy scrambled eggs. After I bathe, we will head over to the church. Our household is Messianic Jewish Christian, so we attend church on Easter. Many Messianics don't, but I worship The Resurrected Messiah anywhere I can.

Afterward, we are going to visit my father in the hospital and then host a little get together at my house, and eat chicken enchiladas.

What are your traditions regarding children around Easter time?
 
Last edited:
When our kids were little, we secretly dyed the eggs the night before so the kids wouldn't realize that we were actually the Easter Bunny. Early Easter morning, we hid the eggs before the kids were awake. In good weather, we hid them in the yard; in bad weather, we hid them in the house. There was a candy and toy-filled basket for each child, and they used the baskets to find and collect the eggs. We usually attended church, dressed in Easter finery. I cooked a big traditional meal, usually ham, potato salad, various vegetables, and carrot cake for dessert for the evening meal.

These days, I still make baskets for the grandkids but don't dye or hide eggs. It's their parents' turn to do that!
 
Not being a very religious country Easter was always just a 4 day holiday for us. It's a traditional weekend to go camping somewhere and just have a relaxing weekend. The kids all get given a chocolate egg or two on Sunday morning but that's about it.

By the time we're teenagers the chocolate eggs are forgotten too, it's just a time to get away from the cities and celebrate life in the natural world. Swimming, fishing, surfing, water skiing and just enjoying life.
 
I don't celebrate holidays anymore

The life I've been living just does not ever allow me to be happy or enjoy life in any way

And I'm too used to being depressed and bored and frustrated with nothing changing or coming to stabilize us

It never lasts long enough for me to appreciate so I just finally figured there's no point into putting that much energy and oxygen into even making an attempt just so I can find out it was all for nothing
 
I am Catholic, and live in the southern part of America. Since we are not a main-line denomination here in the "Bible Belt" I cannot speak for my Protestant neighbors, most of whom attend a sunrise service on Easter itself. I attend a tiny Catholic church back of the freight yard in an old railroad town. It's not much bigger than a tiny chapel, the parking lot is just a vacant lot across the street full of grass & trees, and we aren't very fancy but we do like to have a good time. It was a foul rainy day here, cold and wet and windy, but we all got together starting late last night.

We celebrate the Easter vigil as well as celebrating Mass on Easter itself. The vigil is traditionally the day when they baptize adults who would like to become Christians, and when the already-baptized are confirmed. The mass starts very late Saturday night, after dark, and begins with lighting a fire outside of the church--a great deal of the customs around Easter in the Catholic church are of great antiquity and go back to the times of the early Christians. Some of the traditions were even borrowed from the Pagans of Europe, for example the Easter fire--this was borrowed from Germanic paganism and was suppressed on the conversion of the German nations to Christianity. The ban remained as late as 742 A.D., but the Irish monasteries (having learned the fun of a spring fire from St. Patrick himself, who learned it from the Druids) brought it through, and people eventually got their heads screwed on straight & realized it is grand fun to light a huge bonfire in the front of church on Easter night. Not only is it the holiest night of the year, but it is also our highest feast, celebrated with the most solemnity. Back in the middle ages they used to calculate the beginning of the year from Easter, instead of the first of January. Course we don't do that anymore!

The purple cloth over the statues & pictures in church, left over from Lent, is removed.
The organist no longer silences his instrument during Lent, like in the old times, but the word Alleluia returns with all the more joyful hymns. He pulls out a couple handfuls of stops.
The choir, which doesn't really show up very often, suddenly assembles and decides to sing. They could stand to practice more but most Catholics cannot sing very well unless we are practicing in the bath tub.
Instead of the usual short readings there are seven long readings. It's impressively long and everyone stays up late.

Since we had 2 new people become Catholics last night, it took even longer as they had to be baptized and confirmed--same for 2 other people already Catholic who were confirmed. With 4 people celebrating we threw a party for them in the hall. We are not fancy--we drink boxed wine and eat home cooking. It was awesome.

Anyway, I went to the Easter vigil & stayed out too late partying, then decided to stick around & help wash dishes after the partying (as we cannot afford an electric dishwasher), only making it home at 1:00 AM (The road conditions were poor and my car is very old so it's not as if I could drive fast in a storm.) When I came home I fell sound asleep.

My girlfriend who lives across the state line got up & went to Mass with her family on Easter morning itself, and the old cathedral there was just recently restored, so it was nice that they all had a pleasant Sunday. She sent me some lovely pictures of it with the ceiling repainted and the windows cleaned up again, and new plaster and all that. It was about to fall apart there for awhile as the building is over 100 years old & the Southern climate is very harsh on older buildings. Both of us are art & architecture junkies so this was nice--they had good music & all that. Lunch at her family's place is supposed to be steaks today (her family is significantly wealthier than I am and they like to eat a lot of things I either can't afford or never developed a craving for.)

Years ago people would bring home the Easter fire from church in a lantern, and light candles & stuff in their homes like a sort of "eternal flame" to be extinguished next Lent. This died out with the Edison electric light and the automobile (hard to carry a lighted lantern in a closed car), but it is of course picturesque.
It continues on to about midnight. Catholic stuff is a lot more fun if you embrace the campy old-fashioned aspect of it and just enjoy.

I went home & we did have a rather nice meal, big pot of venison chili and black coffee and an apple pie. Very straightforward.

TL DR Catholics go hard on Easter Sunday. Done right, Catholic Easter is as wild as a Pagan solstice ritual but with an intensity from Christianity. It is a rainbow of multicultural influences from classical antiquity, prehistory, the medieval period, and even the present day. And we'll be partying all the way through Pentecost!
 
My brother and I were spoiled little snots.

Easter consisted of "wake up in the morning, go downstairs, easter baskets were set up on the table, there were presents, YAAAAAAAYYYYYY PRESENTS, oh boy chocolate".

Also there was the "dip eggs in color" bit, which was always a few days before Easter. That was the most memorable part. I miss doing that sort of thing... those childhood rituals like that.

Uhhhhh.... not much beyond that really.
 
One tradition we have that I have heard people don't have in other countries, Easter crime fiction. Easter is full of crime stories and murder, people read crime books and there are special Easter crime shows on tv, Not real crime, just fiction and whodunnits where people try to figure out a crime mystery. When I was a kid I thought that was what people did everywhere during Easter. Then I found out we're just weird here where I live. :)

There are even crime mysteries printed on the milk cartons during Easter, short stories and bloody crime mysteries you can solve during breakfast.

www.forbes.com

Norway’s Weird 100-Year-Old Easter Tradition Of Crime Fiction

Norwegians indulge in crime fiction novels and Nordic noir TV and film every Easter. Known as ‘easter crime’ (påskekrim), the tradition is just as well known within Norway as it is confusing to visitors.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com
 
Last edited:
We have dropped the egg & rabbit fertility rites in favor of a "Gentile" Passover based on the red cord that spared Rahab's family. We usually include lamb meat in our dinner, often in the form of gyros. Resurrection Day [a.k.a. Easter] is the culmination of Passover.
 
Happy Easter everyone.
Truly, He is risen.
Here is one of my favorite ancient Christian chants. It is appropriate for Easter.

 
Crossbreed said:
We have dropped the egg & rabbit fertility rites in favor of a "Gentile" Passover based on the red cord that spared Rahab's family. We usually include lamb meat in our dinner, often in the form of gyros. Resurrection Day [a.k.a. Easter] is the culmination of Passover.
Click to expand...
I celebrate Pesach more richly than Easter. Most years we have a full seder. I have a few Haggadahs. My favorite one was actually published by Maxwell House coffee.

So, day three of Pesach is when I think of the "true resurrection day". But Easter is nice too. It's the big, fancy observance of the resurrection. I like going to church and having big family feasts.
 
Stayed home this year and made a nice Easter dinner.

Remembered the childhood tradition of dying the eggs and making the Easter basket. I never did the egg-hunt though.
 
It's odd because my family wasn't religious either, but we hunted for Easter eggs once or twice in my childhood. Since becoming an organist, I've participated in a few different services for this Holy week, but most consistently at my new church.

Despite not believing in scripture or organized religion, there's just something that is moving about Good Friday services.Maybe it's the feeling of collective mourning that I pick up on from other folks? It's something about the intimacy that also affects me on Christmas Eve services, when the lights are out and we all hold candles singing 'Silent Night.' It's curious to me.
 
autism-and-autotune said:
It's odd because my family wasn't religious either, but we hunted for Easter eggs once or twice in my childhood. Since becoming an organist, I've participated in a few different services for this Holy week, but most consistently at my new church.

Despite not believing in scripture or organized religion, there's just something that is moving about Good Friday services.Maybe it's the feeling of collective mourning that I pick up on from other folks? It's something about the intimacy that also affects me on Christmas Eve services, when the lights are out and we all hold candles singing 'Silent Night.' It's curious to me.
Click to expand...
I think ritual is kinda like that generally. Ritual is one of those things that I think people might need to some extent, and it's not always a religious ritual either.

There is something human about rituals and ceremonies in general and it might take an anthropologist to give a better explanation.
 
Crossbreed said:
Isn't that the Feast of Firstfruits?
Click to expand...
I don't know much about that one. I know that I've celebrated it with my Messianic congregation, but I don't remember when it happens or what it's for.

I know that Shavuot comes after Pesach. Shavuot, I think, is when Moses brought down the ten commandments... or was that Simcha Torah? I forget. Sorry.

I do know that you eat cheesecake on Shavuot. Who could forget??!

I grew up in a pagan household, and didn't know very much about Abrahamic faith until I was in my thirties, other than what I learned as a kid in public school during world history, or the little that I learned from my paternal grandmother (It was her nudgings as a child that really got me as an adult to embrace God).

It's been a few years, but still, it's all new to me.

Please tell me about Firstfruits.
 
My husband bought two giant bags of candy, so I stayed up until midnight last night stuffing 100 eggs with candy and hiding them. The kids stuff themselves silly with candy for a few days.

The church we go to will similarly go crazy with egg hunts. Like, so many eggs that everyone could fill a basket if they wanted crazy. It's always madness but the kids love it. Anyway. They will be on a sugar rush for the next week or so, needless to say.

I usually make Doro Wat for Easter. But my husband has decided to make dinner this year, beef bourguignon. I told my oldest that the pearl onions were cow's eyeballs. I don't think he believed me.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New Threads

Top Bottom