Easter, what does it mean to you?
For me Easter is all about new beginnings, about hope, about the possibilities that life brings and this is something that I wish to pass on to my children. Both the boys have been learning about the Christian meaning of Easter at school and both have a fab letter about Easter, which I published on the blog last year. We have the boys a fantastic Playmobil Easter Egg each, which had been sent to us by the PR and again which we gave last year and they still play with the toys, but what we didn’t give them was chocolate (Those Lindt eggs in the below image are mine from the boys)!. They have one chocolate egg each from my Mother in law, but that is it.
Some of the pictures, I have seen today are just obscene, well the images aren’t, but the amount of chocolate in them are! I do not understand, why would you give your child that much chocolate or allow them to receive that much chocolate? Now when it comes to foods, both my boys are allowed sweets, chocolate, fizzy drinks etc, but in moderation.
I really feel that our celebrations are being commercialised. When I was small there was no such thing as the Easter Bunny and we were grateful when we received one egg. Nowadays the attitude of entitlement pervades everything. My children would rather spend time with their family than receive a chocolate egg and I am sure most children would too if asked, but for some reason people feel the need to give or rather over give in my opinion.
As a family we look forward to Easter for the traditions we have developed and the memories we are making. We craft, bake and spend quality time together. We have an Easter egg hunt, but only for decorative ones. I give my nieces craft kits or sometimes even nothing. I do not feel the need to purchase them a gift for Easter and do not expect that they receive anything in return.
So what does Easter mean to you and how much is too much?
I definitely agree with you on the amount of chocolate just being over the top and I can say that having counted up 10 Easter eggs in our cupboard, all from friends or family. We had an Easter egg hunt but I made paper eggs and, yes, we did have a chocolate egg at the end for them each and that is the only chocolate they were given today. I’ll keep the rest of the chocolate for melting for making cakes.
I think receiving lots of chocolate is ok, as long as it’s given in the right proportions. Oli has had a tiny bit of a chocolate egg today and that’s all he’ll get on on other days until it’s all gone. We also got the playmobil eggs and I actually thing Oli prefers these to the chocolate eggs he got, he’s took two of the eggs to bed with him to cuddle!!
Easter is about bunnies and eggs for me but I don’t do religion. That being said Blondie Boy didn’t get a single bit of chocolate in his basket.
Horses for courses, I guess.
Flea got a lot of chocolate last Easter, from friends and family, and half of it’s still in the cupboard a year later, waiting to be thrown out. But I’m sure looking at our stash last Easter you’d have said we were obscene and not celebrating in the ‘right’ way 🙂
We get the boys a small egg and do an Easter egg hunt with them for small treats which go in the cupboard. Most people gave them some money this year and they put it together to buy two guinea pigs. I do feel it gets a bit more ott every year. I just like the holiday to spend as a family. I don’t attend church anymore but I did, these times are when I miss it most. x
I can see where you’re coming from, but I do think ‘obscene’ is not a particularly nice word to bandy about when people have been asked to join in with Show Us Your Eggs links, etc. We have a very large family and my daughter received gifts and chocolate from many of her loving relatives, but that doesn’t mean she took them without giving thanks or appreciation, and she certainly didn’t (and won’t) get to stuff her face just because we have a lot of sickly sweet stuff in the house! I think lots of gifts / eggs are perfectly acceptable if that’s what people like to do. Personally i’d rather my daughter got one chocolate egg and nothing else but the fun weekend we had hunting for silly handpainted eggs, etc with the family, but I’m not going to tell Great Aunt not to buy an egg because it’ll just get thrown away later. We’ll break that egg into pieces and bake it into biscuits to take when we visit Great Aunt later, and then everyone gets to benefit from it. I don’t think it’s as simple as no eggs / gifts = a ‘proper’ Easter, or lots of eggs / gifts = ‘obscene’
I hope that we’ve managed to find a happy medium in our house. We bought small chocolate eggs for an egg hunt, and then other members of the family gave them a small egg or gift each. We all had lots of fun together as an extended family. For us the focus is a big family lunch on Easter Sunday, and I’d like the egg hunt to develop into a tradition too.
I’m pretty sure my children would rather have chocolate than spend time with us! I agree that it’s unhealthy to eat too much, and in previous years I’ve thrown some of it away or made rice krispie cakes because they’ve had too much to eat, but it’s hard saying no if kindly people want to give them stuff. I do however think it’s very important to teach children why we celebrate the various religious holidays.
Easter, like all traditions, is what we make it and reflects our own family values. My kids received a silly amount of chocolate but I didn’t let them eat it all in one go! I will make it last. We are still eating chocolate coins from Christmas…that says more about how many coins we bought, rather than how healthy we are!
For me it means spending time with family – preeferably my Mum’s fab Lamb Roast thrown in! A church service and maybe an egg hunt. Too much rain this year! We had a little easter basket of tiny eggs that my toddler handed round to everyone saying ‘Happy Easter’! She herself only go to consume one tiny lindt chick!
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I love Playmbil its a practical toy.. What a good idea for Easter. having said that if children do get a lot of chocolate rationing is key for all !