Easter Bunny

I like the idea wherever it came from or started. In fact this year I think the Easter Bunny should have been declared an 'ESSENTIAL WORKER' as we all really NEED chocolate to help get us through this!

We had some great photographs on our family whatsap group of our grandchildren hunting for eggs. There were huge footprints leading from their cottage to woodland a few yards away - then the little boys rooting around and finding Easter eggs hidden by the Easter bunny.

We can't visit the children, didn't have our usual family get together over Easter. I'm delighted that my daughters and their partners made maps for the children to follow, that magic bunny rabbit feet appeared outside their homes. Harmless fun, no great expense needed but lots of interaction between the children and their parents.

What is there to grumble about?

My granddaughter woke up on Easter Sunday and saw a baby rabbit in the field behind their garden.She was so happy as she thought it was the Easter rabbits baby.I say let them have this little bit of magic and make believe.

The Easter Bunny is a charming and harnless concept (I wrote a short story in my Mind Creating Writing group about him hiding the eggs in the orchard for the children in the nearby house to find and his excitement when they thanked him). But it is lovely old German custom, der Osterhase (Easter Hare) and I prefer to keep the magic of the Easter Bunny, Father Christmas etc in the hearts of young children - they grow up far too soon. I still believe in the old man who magically flies all round the world with his reindeer and a rabbit hiding chocolate for children . Please don't take that away from me and other young at hearts.

So basically the OP goes to town for easter for the kids in the family
But doesnt like people going all out for easter in different ways to how her family does
That about it in a nutshell?

And... since when have rabbits laid eggs?

Up in the North East, we always had Pace Eggs - I’ve still got my first, 69 years on! Just a dyed hard boiled egg, but the name comes from the Latin - Paschal - meaning Easter.

That’s very impressive annab275. Well done to your granddaughter ?

This is my grand daughter in the papier mache Easter Bunny mask that she made with her mum. Any excuse to get creative - it is much more fun to make your own

Advent calendars for Easter? But that would go completely against the idea of Lent (about 42 days I think) when the idea is to be frugal and restrained - not that I've ever managed it.

As children we painted hard-boiled eggs, or dyed them with flowers or old bits of cloth tied around during the boiling. Sometimes we marked them with candle-wax before painting or dyeing. It was incredibly good fun and filled the days between breaking up school and Good Friday. We made little Easter Gardens with old shoe boxes, plaster of Paris and twigs & greenery from the garden or hedgerow. We did get given chocolate Easter eggs by grandparents and aunties. But how much better for children to be creative than have everything magically provided. The commercialisation is regrettable, in my view, but people are free to choose, and that's fine.

My late aunt would take us to roll dyed hard boiled eggs down our local hill. She was an historian and called it "pace egging" The hill was called "Pudding Pie Hill!"

Like all religious days Easter has become commercialised. When I was a child my father would take us to the sweet shop to choose an Easter egg each. On Good Friday Mother would cook a special dinner of salmon, expensive then, and Easter Sunday roast spring lamb with new potatoes and fresh peas.
Mother’s Day didn’t exist. Mothering Sunday after church we gave our mother posies of primroses and violets picked from the hedgerow.

I can't remember when the Easter Bunny came into our lives. I don't think my children were visited by him/her/it.

I definitely wasn't as a child in the 1960s. Our Easter activity was to decorate a hard boiled egg, which we rolled/threw down a hill to break the shell, and then we ate it. Chocolate eggs were given by family/friends of the family.

My granddaughter and grandson have an Easter Egg hunt in our garden/house with coloured plastic eggs and when they have collected 20 each, they can exchange them for an Easter egg (for my granddaughter) and an Easter themed book (for my grandson, who doesn't like chocolate or sweets).

I just think it's a hit of harmless fun for them whilst they're little. I'm pretty sure they know full well there's no bunny doing the hiding, and just humour the adults

No Easter Bunny for me as a child or my own children - eggs were just from the parents or grandparents although when I was at infant school we decorated hard boiled eggs for a competition. However I had to smile last night just before going to bed when we received a message from my son over in NZ (where of course the Easter bunny and tooth fairy are classed as essential workers ). Our little grandsons had done their egg hunt and eaten chocolate before breakfast. They both then felt rather ill and the eldest (6) had 'retired to his bed and turned his face to the wall'! Having just devoured the ears off my Lindt bunny I know the feeling

No, the Easter bunny didn't come to me as a child either.

It is, I believe, a German tradition and the bunny is a hare there.

Surely, it does no harm for children to think the Easter hare or bunny has hidden the eggs they find?

Their parents and grandparents can still give them Easter eggs too if the want to.

You have your traditions and we respect that, other people have their traditions please respect theirs ?

Beechnut is spot on.....

I agree, our children can have a little magic whilst they are very young. Easter Bunny, tooth fairy, Father Christmas. Real life kicks in soon enough I think.
I'm not sure that the cost or amount of gifts is important. As Urmstongran said only a couple of gifts are from the Easter Bunny or Father Christmas the rest are from family and friends.

When I was a reception teacher the children made little baskets and overnight the Easter Bunny put some little eggs in them. I used to make talcum powered paw prints around the place. It seemed a bit of harmless 'magic' that brought some joy.

How long before the shops start selling Easter Bunny 'advent' calendars?

I love that idea!

I bought my 2 1\2 year old granddaughter some plastic eggs from Amazon a while ago with little wind up toys inside, intending that we would have an Easter egg hunt in the garden when they came to us for Easter Sunday lunch, but the lockdown put paid to that. However I gave them to my daughter when she called in to exchange Easter eggs (keeping social distancing of course) and I've just had a video of my granddaughter having an Easter egg hunt in their garden. She was told the Easter Bunny left them - what's the harm in that? The video was magical and it really cheered me up to see her excited little face. We all need a little bit of magic at this horrible time.

We always do egg hunts ....but that’s different.

Where does all this Easter Bunny stuff come from ( the idea that he provides choccy eggs) the US?

One year I hid gold foil eggs in the garden before the arrival of the GC only for the pigeons to be attracted and have a good peck at them!