Easter Traditions

Since this weekend is Easter I thought I would write about some Easter Traditions. I read Jill's blog everyday and I love how she writes and what she does. The best part that I love is at the end of her post she writes some questions that get me thinking about things and I love it! I want to inspire people to start thinking on some of my posts and please feel free to post an answer anytime. I love to see who reads my blog and who you are and where you are from. I am a big lurker on blogs and I have started to step out of my comfort zone and leave comments so that people will know that I am not really crazy (well I try to make them think that).

So my topic today is on Easter Traditions. I grew up in Central Utah where we have wonderful deserts and mountains. Easter is like the first big outing of Spring and it is the big thing around the EC to go to the Desert and either camp, ride four wheelers, go on a picnic or just get out and sight see. Now some years are better than others weather wise but rain, snow, sunny, cloudy or windy the desert is the place to be the Saturday of Easter weekend. There were some years that it was very sunny and hot and you would get your first sun burn from sitting out all day in the nice spring weather. Other years it has been so COLD that you would be sitting out wrapped up in blankets and complaining about the cold instead of getting up out of your chair and leaving! Other years it has been so WINDY that the only thing that you could taste in your food was SAND!

Once on the desert you had to make sure that you rolled your Easter Eggs. Now this is another tradition that people who are not from the EC do not understand and honestly some of us in the EC don't really understand why this is done only that it is tradition and that it is fun to see whose egg can get mutilated the most by the end of the hill. It doesn't have to be a hill of pure dirt to roll your easter egg down, in fact the more rocks and bumps you have the better off. If you have a bunch of rocks that you roll them down that is good too. We know we are crazy. Those of us who are fairly young like me (yes I still think that I am young!) we just blame our parents since they are really the crazy ones who made us do these traditions when we were young and so we have to pass them onto our children also so they can think that we are crazy when they are older.

We also do the easter bunny thing and pass out treats for the kids. When I was growing up the easter bunny would spread candy all over the house and we would wake up and have jelly beans and robin eggs and all the candy that you could imagine spread all throughout the house. We would gather it all up and put it in a HUGE mixing bowl. Well one year my Grandma Labrum came to our house for easter. She was suffering from Alzheimers and she wasn't really all there. Well my Grandma ate all of our easter candy that year. We were so upset. As little kids we did not think that was very cool since we didn't get to eat hardly any of it! She kept saying she wasn't hungry, but that was because all she ate was our candy all day long. Another funny thing about the easter bunny, I was old enough to know that the easter bunny was not real and I woke up around 2 a.m. and my parents were asleep and there was NO candy on the floor. I had to wake my mom up and tell her that the easter bunny had not come yet. She sat straight up in bed and said "Oh, &*#$ Garth, we forgot to get the candy out." My dad sat up in bed and him and my mom got up and spread the candy out so that the other kids would have candy the next morning.

We mostly got candy growing up for easter we didn't get presents. One year we got a t-shirt after Emery High won the state championship. I have started giving my kids candy and some little presents and I have really made it a point not to get a whole bunch of candy. I have one little boy that doesn't eat candy so I don't want him to feel left out so I have moved more towards some little presents and away from so much candy. I also think that this year I will try to teach them why we have easter and what easter celebrating. I want to incorporate the Savior and what he means in my life and what easter means to me.

So here are your points to ponder:

What are your Easter traditions?

Do you go anywhere for Easter?

Do you give treats or presents in the Easter Basket?

How do you incorporte the Savior into your Easter celebrations?

Feel free to leave a comment!