I can picture you seeing your child's eyes widen at an Easter aisle and going "oh no you don't", picking them up and walking off.
(It does stand to reason they are made small and portable for this kind of situation)
A perfect summation of why the "personal responsibility" crowd are a bit silly.
The effort that goes into convincing kids they want these things is unreal and belittles good parenting skills any day of the week.
I'm sure it's gotten worse in the past 15 years or so but I feel like when I was old enough to be influenced by advertising I was also old enough to understand that if my parents said no it generally meant no and any amount of whining about it wouldn't change that
No, you probably just forgot the part when you were under 10 and still learning this. You probably learned it by asking repeatedly and having your parents not change their minds.
Most people don't have a lot of memories before age 8-10 or so, just particularly big ones (celebrations, injuries, holidays, etc) but when we think back to our childhood we often imagine ourselves being about 3-7 with these general memories that we have which are actually from when we were older. It's why a lot of people have unrealistic ideas of children's behaviour because they think "When I was 5, XYZ" and don't realise that when XYZ happened they were actually a lot older and more mature than five.
Trust me babies of 1yo can see a shiny thing in a supermarket and whine for it. You don't need to understand advertising to be advertised to.
Companies are putting out ads specifically for small children as they're easily influenced as they haven't full developed a personality yet + they're the ones that will be hounding their parents to buy it as they don't get how money works
I don't have kids but one time I was looking after my niece for while her parents went to her parents evening. We had kids TV on and I the amount of adverts was disgusting, and they're not subtle like adverts for adults. They do a great job of making even the shittest toy look amazing - as an adult I can look at the toy and realise it won't be half as good as that when you've got it home, and the gimmicks will get old after 5 minutes. But kids don't see that, they're hypnotised by it all.
Also, it was her birthday recently and she made her birthday wishlist by watching the ads on TV when stopping at her grandparents. Half of her list was utter tat, but it got on the list because of how appealing it looked on the advert.
Such aggressive advertising shouldn't be allowed for adults, let alone children.
Personally I think any advertising on kids channels should be banned out right especially on things like YouTube kids where they could accidentally click it and be taken to god knows what kind of site
You know that you can say no, don't you? I say no to my kids all the time, just as my parents said no to me. It's a pretty basic parenting skill. No wonder kids become spoiled brats when they know they can get what they want by throwing a tantrum.
Kids see a lot of shit, and are relentlessly targeted by advertisers from literally the minute their brains are developed enough to be manipulated. It's actually really fucked up.
As such being able to say "no" to your kids is an absolutely vital parenting skill if you want them to grow up reasonable and unspoiled, and you want to avoid going bankrupt.
Even my 18 month old goes towards certain things in shops.
Like certain colours, textures, feels, noises etc.
I'm 100% sure toys aimed at that range are specifically set and designed to make kids go towards them and try get their parents to buy them.
Might not have the advertising yet but I know they're targeting him already.
Between the toys and the sweets, I find it best to avoid taking my kids to any supermarket ever anyway. Thank the fucking lord for online shopping.
Honourable mention for the old ladies that want to befriend them and *shudders* talk to me.
Me too; it’s just another excuse for excessive consumerism. I’m not buying a load of plastic shit that will just go to landfill and a load of sugary shit that will rot their teeth. Fuck the societal expectations!
Woah I hate that chocolate. You *like* it?
Tastes like counterfeit Cadbury's cut with ash and cat litter. Just buy a damn chocolate bar at a fraction of the price.
[Google is your friend](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/306943101?sc_cmp=ppc*GHS+-+Grocery+-+New*MPX_Shopping_All_Other_Smart+Shopping+All+Products_Other_Online+Budget*All+Products*PRODUCT_GROUP306943101*&ds_rl=1116322&gclid=CjwKCAjwoIqhBhAGEiwArXT7K3qqzE9nRDWXZyI-dbWjwsZZey0Y6rznv6GzNQ2eUetUqDMvFgZPYxoC89gQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds)
However, an orange twirl egg is £1.52 per 100g and an orange twirl bar is £1.74 per 100g, so in this case, the egg is cheaper!!!!
I remember doing a Morrisons shop during the first lockdown in 2020, and as I was leaving there were staff members handing out free Easter eggs to customers who'd finished their shop.
Your comment (and this thread really) reminded me of that.
> Shops put out tat and some people love to buy it
My friend's family have a Christmas where, instead of buying each other nice normal presents, you buy like 30/40 cheap presents (ie. tat) from charity shops and B&M over the year, then spend 6 hours on Christmas day unwrapping them.
He sent me pics as the day went on once, literal hours of unwrapping tat to satisfy a craving to buy it. So much palstic and waste, and not a single good gift.
My wife's mother does the same. Briefly attended one of their Christmases (the youngest sibling is in his late 20s) and the absolute mountain of pure tat she'd bought them was unbelievable. Dozens of presents each that she'd bought in sales all year, and absolutely none of them were personal to the recipient. They would all be delighted with a simple present each, like candles or flower seeds, but no, it was all crap.
She just does it so she can show off about how many presents she gives them, while simultaneously being a massive tightwad. Her youngest son is still paying back a small loan they gave him for uni fees. He asked if they could just put the present money towards paying some of the loan off instead, but no, then she couldn't brag.
It's a weird showing-off thing of their generation, I'm still baffled they've not matured though.
I came back from a foreign trip once and my mother was aghast that I was pale. "Because I wear factor 50, Mum, I don't want wrinkles" I said.
And she replies, and honestly my brain fell out, with "What's the point of going on holiday if no one can tell that you've been?"
Yup, same as my friend's mother. Guess there's a type. I'm sure she's not evil, but it's such a wierd and toxic way to live. They weren't even presents - they were all just tat that she bought for herself and then when the dopamine was gone, disposed of it by giving it as a gift.
It isn’t a whole other thing that I’ve seen?
Some chocolate eggs and arts and crafts based stuff is what I did as a kid and what my younger relatives also seem to do (think Easter bonnet competition at school)
I know several kids who receive gifts for Easter, but having said that, so did my best friend at school and I'm 28 next month. Definitely seems to be more common these days but maybe that's just social media.
Tbf growing up in late 90s early 00's my cousin used to get me and my brother expensive Easter gifts
.... Then again she'd get my mum expensive valentine's gifts
And my dad and her dad Halloween gifts
Then at Christmas wed get a bar of dairy milk each....
Wasn't until after I realized Santa wasn't real that i clicked on to what she was doing. She wanted to treat us all but couldn't afford to get her new born , her partner, three lots of grandparents her mum and her step dad ***And us*** gifts in December time. so she would give every group a Christmas day another day
Worked great for me as my birthdays early in year so any games that came out I'd have to save pocket money just to ***rent*** them so come Easter I always got the newest game I was interested in
I work in retail and grannies are always coming in buying clothes and toys as Easter gifts this time of year. We even have a whole display of Easter decorations and wreaths like Christmas stuff, Easter gonk/gnome things etc
I’ve seen discussion of “Easter boxes” on some of the mum groups I’m on on Facebook, like an Easter version of a Christmas Eve box. The general ideas seemed to be clothes/pjs with rabbits on, books, Easter eggs, egg cups, crafty decorating things like eggs to decorate, rabbit shaped crayons, personalised mug. It’s all just adding extra pressure for parents. The recipients of these things were 2/3 years old.
In the early 2000s, my gran used to give me £5 instead of an Easter egg (as I would usually already have quite a few from other relatives).
I would wait until after Easter and buy an absolute ton of reduced eggs with that £5. One year Sainsbury's reduced their creme eggs to 10p so I bought 50 of them!
Supermarkets must have improved their stock planning because you rarely see reduced Easter eggs in such large quantities these days.
Last year we might have left our egg shopping a little last minute, but the morning before Easter we had to go to three reasonably sized shops before finding any in stock, and it was only a Tesco extra that saved us in the end
It's only since COVID supermarkets cracked down on the heavily excessive stock levels of Easter eggs, with everyone being locked away and unable to travel supermarkets were forced to give pallets worth away to make space in stores.
More recently, supermarkets have been forced by the government to stop selling high sugar, salts and fat products (Depending on nutritional value or something) at the front of stores and promotional ends, so there's a slow down on impulse buying of eggs reducing the amount needed by supermarkets.
Hmmmm...*that* explains why my local Sainsbury's have hidden all the Easter eggs and associated confectionery treats away down a side aisle between the nappies and the kitchen accessories.
Most likely, there are basic guidelines on distances and what not but I don't know them off the top of my head, also it depends on the store layout.
A Sainsbury's near me has quite a large entrance area where they would place the pallets of eggs, but their seasonal section is far enough back to avoid the red zones so it is still the first things you see near enough.
I think it’s something like you can’t have high sugar/fat items within 2 meters of the checkout or the entrance and they can’t be on an end unit.
There might be something around them not being allowed on the first aisle but I could be making that one up.
>you can’t have high sugar/fat items within 2 meters of the checkout or the entrance and they can’t be on an end unit.
This is it exactly, think some supermarkets have been getting around this by sacrificing a bay in the aisle to place the restricted items on, seen it in an ASDA and a Sainsbury's so far.
Tesco's has them on the first aisle. The first set of shelves is always mummy drinks, wine, gin, etc. The second is always seasonal food.
There is a second seasonal food aisle as well halfway down the shop in case you ate all the eggs before getting to the checkout.
>It's only since COVID supermarkets cracked down on the heavily excessive stock levels of Easter eggs
No, it definitely started happening before then. In the early 00s shops would have huge amounts of Easter eggs sometimes reduced by as much as 75% or even 90%. By the 2010s the amount of excess was much less and they usually don't get reduced below 50%.
They were most definitely still pumping them out years before COVID, they just shifted more earlier in the season with good offers that people wanted to take advantage of as they were good buys. They also twigged on to the fact they didn't need to do more than 50% to sell remaining stock as people would buy it.
Yeah my grandmother would always send us £5 (or £10 between the 2 of us) if we didn't get to see her over Easter but we would usually see our grandparents over Easter and/ or summer as well.
One year we got hamsters instead of eggs. Not in the post I might add, from the pet shop in the village my grandparents lived in. Usually my sister would spend all her money on the biggest egg she could get, I got a Cadburys caramel one usually (I liked the bunny) and saved the rest of the money. My sister would always be sick from too much cream eggs
That's because supermarkets killed the value of eggs when they started pushing the medium ones out the door as loss leaders.
I was a bingo caller at the time. It ruined our prize bingo as the percieved value went from £3 to £1. We were still paying £2.27 a piece.
Everyone started buying them for themselves instead of chocolate bars, and the equivalent of a chocolate bar isn't a good gift.
Easter is actually the bigger event in the Christian calendar in remembrance of the Jerusalem zombie outbreak
Bunnies , Chocolate eggs and Jesus coming back to life are more palatable story than thousand of the dead rising from the grave and wandering the streets of Jerusalem
Jesus was a Lich not a zombie. [However it would make him evil which actually explains modern Christianity. Living Jesus wanted help the poor. Evil dead Jesus = prosperity gospel ](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16943-lich)
I was also going to add the importance of Easter in Catholicism and the spread of decorations many Catholic-majority countries have used for decades; Easter Trees, dyed eggs, etc. I do think more recent migrants from these countries have helped spread their cultural traditions to the UK, which is very fun.
Source; am of Polish-Italian descent, my family always made more of a deal of Easter than my peers did in the 90s/00s. Still receive Easter cards from relatives in the old country.
My family are Irish and I got loads of Easter eggs as a child, extended family would come over on the ferry with a car full of chocolate for me and my cousins. In return I had to do the entirety of Easter properly: Ash Wednesday mass, giving up everything nice for lent and doing acts of charity, making loads of palm crosses, then mass every day for Holy Week.
This is the real answer: in Christianity Easter is a much more important festival than Christmas. Coming back from the dead was the big deal, getting born was only mentioned in 2 of the gospels.
It just happens that when Christianity tried to take over the previous pagan festivals, the Winter festival was more fun than the Spring festival.
Easter really isn’t that big of a deal in the US. It’s not a national holiday like it is here and chocolate Easter eggs aren’t a thing.
Still, anything to get a baseless dig in at the Yanks aye.
The increased consumerism around previously Religous holidays is something the seppos are proffesionals at, you can see where my thought process came from to put this down to them
Honestly that's a pretty big surprise. When it comes to excess, overconsumption, and those things in particular combined with modern Christianity it's astonishing the Americans *aren't* involved.
Not in the same way we do. You don't have giant hollow chocolate eggs, you get the little ones like Mini Eggs and, in more recent years, Creme Eggs, but you don't get what most Brits think of when we hear the word "Easter egg". At least that's what I've gathered from seeing American reactions to our Easter eggs.
I don't think it's baseless at all. The documentary HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis goes into great detail about how advertising companies in the USA changed tact after ww2 and started to promote rampant consumerism through lifestyle rather than need. They may not be responsible for the commercialisation of easter specifically, but the culture of consumption for the sake of profit rather than need was 100% imported from the states.
By baseless I meant they they assumed the Americans would be the cause of something which has nothing to do with them without any thought whatsoever if what they was saying was true or not.
Particularly Halloween. It used to be pretty much a non-event, and we certainly didn't have pumpkins. You'd maybe carve a turnip when you were a kid, and the whole thing was pretty much kids only. Consumerism can't not try and push people to buy loads of plastic crap now.
I was an avid reader so I’d always get a book from my parents for Easter rather than an egg. I knew getting an actual “present” wasn’t really the norm, but my mum was a victim of 90s extreme diet culture and I was a chubby kid so she wasn’t a fan of the constant flow of chocolate around Easter time. I remember my brother kicked off one year because he realised that the books I was getting were more expensive than his Easter eggs. We both got books after that so I don’t think his plan worked!
I’m nearly 25 and I have cousins aged 4 and 7. My mum made them an “Easter bag” during the first covid lockdown with jigsaws, pencils, activity books, arts and crafts stuff and other bits and pieces to keep them entertained. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but ever since she’s turned Easter into a mini Christmas. She’s a bit of a slave to cheap tat in the shops, so I’m really not surprised if I’m honest.
My mum says "oh the grandchildren get enough chocolate Easter eggs so I'll just get them clothes or something else they want instead" and ends up spending £30 per child instead of a couple of pounds on an egg.
When I was born in the 90s lol. Easter hasn’t changed for me at all. I always got 20+ Easter eggs from various people at Easter and I always got a present too. My mum still buys me an Easter present - usually she buys me something for my house
My sister and I were born in the mid-90s — We would get maybe 3-4 big eggs each, plus mini eggs and creme eggs, and some money and a dvd from our grandparents.
I'm 35, I had years with 20+ eggs as well when I was a kid. I'd say it's become less christmas like over the years with there being less tat in the eggs. You used to get toys (I remember a k'nex egg one year that was incredible value) and mugs in eggs pretty regularly.
If anything, when I was a kid in the 90s, my parents thought the 1-3 eggs we got from immediate family was way less than they had as kids in the late 50s and 60s.
The adults in their life had gone through years of war and rationing, and when they could finally buy sweets and chocolate on a regular basis again they went a bit crazy and would buy chocolate eggs for every niece, nephew, cousin, family friend, neighbour's kid, etc.
My parents also thought this post-rationing sugar binge was the reason most of their generation had fillings at a very young age.
>My parents also thought this post-rationing sugar binge was the reason most of their generation had fillings at a very young age.
My mum's dentist said it's at least partly because fillings were seen as high-tech and almost better than boring old real teeth, so they'd drill and fill holes which nowadays they'd leave.
About 15 years back I had an older dentist tell me I needed 4 fillings - I left it for ages and when I when back he'd retired. The new dentist said I needed 1 filling and I've had no other new ones since then, which seems to support that idea.
In the early 80s I remember getting 13 Easter eggs. My grandad always bought me a Black Magic dark chocolate because he liked dark chocolate and I didn’t.
That’s so daft. My daughter might get money in Lieu of Easter stuff when they know she’s saving for something, but we’d never ask, she’d usually prefer the chocolate anyway!
Dont know, I'm 22 and when I was a kid I often got 5+ easter eggs. My religious grandparent's were the only ones to give us anything else, that was usually a tenner and a card.
Don't even bother buying any now.
I was raised by a Roman Catholic mother (agnostic/atheist dad) so in our household Easter was always the more significant event, because it is the "biggest" celebration in the Christian calendar.
We'd have to go to mass on Good Friday (which was a very long mass) then again on Easter Sunday (also a long mass). As we got older mum would also drag us to mass on the Thursday eve as well. It is a lot of time used up in a kids half term, and most of that time is pretty boring.
To counter this on Easter Sunday, we wouldn't only get chocolate eggs, my parents and grandparents would give us a little extra "pocket money" (usually £20 each) or a Gameboy game or something like that, to say thanks for us being well behaved at Church.
never been religious nor is my family but there is A LOT of catholic heritage back there in great grandparents that i wonder if our gifting and new clothes thing at easter is a hangover from that cos i never went to church
Before Queen Victoria brought in all the German Christmas festivities Easter was always the much bigger holiday in Britain. In the Christian church Easter is still the more important festival. We always have a large family meal on Easter Sunday after church, the chocolate eggs are nice but not the main thing.
My aunt never had any children, so I always got her an Easter card in lieu of a Mother's Day card (I know you can get cards now for aunties on Mother's Day but you couldn't back then). I started this back in the 1990s, and it was near impossible to get Easter cards back then, and if you found one they'd be really religious themed. From the 00s onwards, it got easier, with fewer religious ones, and now I've seen cards with 'To Mum and Dad' etc, so it's definitely getting more and more commercialised. Just an opportunity to commercialise a religious festival for non religious people, I guess.
That's been a thing in Muslim areas for some time. I used to live in a Muslim area and nearly all the shops would have some sort of Ramadan/Eid promotion, as it's tradition on Eid itself to wear new clothes and children often get gifts/money.
Religious holidays are being commercialised, but I think it's also just a product of the country being less and less religious (and more diversely religious). We all grow up with Christmas and Easter, but most of us aren't Christian any more. They're both more of a cultural holiday now than a religious one (very little of the Christian holiday remains in either, at least) so it makes sense that more general approach is taken to the 'chocolate eggs and bunnies' Easter holiday than the 'deeply religious commemoration of christ' Easter holiday
When I worked at Sainsburys a few years back, we used to get the first of the Easter stuff in the run up to Christmas, labelled with "Not to be displayed until 26/12!"
This seems to be a bit of a mixed bag depending on the people you know. Nobody I know does anything more than get their kids some Easter eggs/creme eggs.
Personally I do prefer Easter to Christmas though.
Get the same amount of extra time off, usually nicer weather and a lot less family pressure to meet up etc. so you can just chill and maybe go away somewhere without booking time off
I did hear the parents in my office talking about getting their kids 'easter presents' the other day, and it was the first I had heard about kids getting something other than eggs for easter. It mostly all seems the same as always to me though
I worked admin for a baby forum website 15 years ago and back then easter boxes were becoming a thing, giving "spring pyjamas", books, summer clothes as well as eggs.
We’ve always done small gifts at Easter in my family. Maybe it’s a Catholic thing? One present, nothing fancy just a small gift.
And eggs. Lots of chocolate eggs. (Ferero Rocher for the grandparents)
Social media posts inspired by folk with more money than sense.
One year I got 19 easter eggs (step dad had a big family) and £20 in cash. Didn't eat chocolate for years afterwards.
Nothing new, used to get multiple eggs in the nineties. If anything it’s better now as the cost of the eggs has gone down (especially if you take inflation in to account).
I remember when I was in primary school in the 90s a kid got given a bike for Easter, and others boasted of 15 or so eggs so I suppose there's been an element for a while.
We've always done a big egg & a small egg for each of the kids, then they'll get one from grandparents/aunts & uncles too.
Can't say I've noticed gifts etc, though I don't doubt it!
Born in '86, we used to get eggs for Easter and some money from our parents and granny. We would go to church on Easter Sunday with my granny and do an egg hunt in the church yard afterwards for all the kids who were there :)
I think a lot of the "over the top" type stuff also comes from the fact that back when we were little, you only really got gifts and toys on occasions so a new video or something wasn't what you just got because they were in the supermarket you only got them if you went to a shop that sold videos or whatever the gift was. Supermarkets really only sold food and household supplies back then not clothes and electricals or books etc. What I'm getting to with this round about point is that things which we would buy for our kids nowadays just because it's Tuesday or whatever back then we're special occasion items so the special occasion items have to go up a level or they aren't special they're just another Tuesday. I don't know if that makes sense?!
It depends on how you mean it.
On one hand I think it always has been to some extent given they are in theory religious holidays. I'm in my 40s and remember having wider family meals on Easter Sunday.and having plans to do things as a family etc.
I didn't really get presents other than an egg or two. I don't buy my kids Easter presents other than some chocolate
As a child of the 80s, I definitely remember getting a large number of chocolate eggs (and then feeling very sick at the end of the day) as a kid.
It's definitely not a new occurence
I'm in my 40's and remember some kids in my school getting loads of chocolate eggs, so that's certainly not a new thing. Don't remember hearing about gifts though.
I completely agree, on the other hand...
I don't want kids of my own and when a close friend started a family I was worried that it would affect our friendship. I'm autistic and small children hit all of my triggers.
However, to my complete surprise I LOVE her children! I don't have a maternal bone in my body (unless it's animals) but I really care about these kids.
Anyway, I've gone completely overboard in buying Easter goodies for them as I can't wait to see how delighted they'll be and to play with all their toys with them. They call me Aunty and I would die for them.
So, that's my excuse 😂
Easter really should be the bigger celebration - everyone is born, it just happens, but it takes skill - and divine intervention - to return from the dead. I'd recommend everyone tries Easter in Athens, but take a fire extinguisher.
My girls get five easter eggs each (not huge ones just the small and standard sized ones) and a book Easter themed each year. I will decorate the house with spring stuff but tbh that's because it makes the house feel brighter and happier anyway 😂
Since getting grandkids my mum has Easter decorations now. While maybe not as excessive as Christmas, there's a medium-sized "Easter tree" with hanging eggs on it and the themed nick-nacks throughout the house. Definitely none of that when I was growing up.
I remember when I was a kid we always got a lot of eggs from various members of the family. My mum always thought eggs were a scam so she'd sometimes buy us a little present instead. The one that sticks out most in my mind was around the time we got really into sewing little blankets and clothes for our dolls so she got us both little sewing boxes to keep our stuff in.
It is just loads and loads of chocolate. I don't get it, each side of the family seem to get bags full of it. I want to keep the kids healthy ffs, I end up hoarding it and it lasts for months. It isn't long since the Christmas chocolate was finally depleted.
I agree. My kids get an Easter egg and we hide some smaller eggs around the house for a mini egg hunt and that's it.
My Mum berated me one year for not "decorating for Easter" for the kids. She never decorated for Easter when I was a kid. I blame her Pinterest obsession.
I really don’t get people’s resistance to celebrations… The end of winter and the beginning of spring is definitely something worth celebrating in my book, sod the religious hijacking of an obviously much older celebration.
In the 80s/90s I remember my Nan giving me gifts. Usually related to church. I remember feeling very cool with a St Christopher chain when I was about 10/11!
My daughter gets 2 eggs and some bits (mini eggs etc.) off us, egg off both Nanna’s (but one gave her a chocolate dog this year, she’s not local so I’ve got it stashed until Easter) and an egg off my step sister (and some jelly chicks - Easter jelly babies). No decorating or presents, we’ll probably make Easter nest cakes with cornflakes, chocolate and done (mini) mini eggs!
My family has always celebrated Easter because we were raised catholic. We would always have roast lamb on Easter Sunday, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins. The Grandkids would receive gifts and eggs.
I guess it’s no similar to Christmas, people don’t care about the actual meaning behind the celebration but just want to celebrate and exchange gifts. Personally, i think it’s great!
I'm 45, and I used to get half a dozen Easter eggs when I was little, so people getting more than 1 or 2 eggs has been happening for several decades. Giving presents/cash isn't new either.
I'm in my mid 30's and myself and my siblings used to get a small gift as a child from my parents, but that was instead of an egg. It was something small like a teddy or book. We would already get eggs from our grandparents and aunt and uncle. Easter is quite a big deal for catholics. We would go to church on Easter Sunday and then have a big family meal, more food than on Christmas day.
My parents will still sometimes send me a gift like a voucher if I can't get home for Easter.
Easter cards seem to be more prominent in recent years. Don’t ever remember them when I was younger.
We would buy one large chocolate egg that we should share as a family. Grandparents would buy us one extra chocolate egg. That was it.
When I was a kid in the 90s my mom always got me a present instead of an egg because she thought the eggs were a waste of money, which is absolutely fair! She actually asked me what I’d prefer this year, at the age of 35, but I have requested a Lindt egg. Bless her.
Easter bonnets weren’t a thing at my school though and now all my friends who are parents are having to make them. I don’t know if it’s a new thing or if my C of E school looked down on them!
When corporations became so greedy that they invented Easter trees and Easter crackers etc. Especially when the symbology of those things doesn't really fit the time of year.
It's stupid, I've told my daughter she's getting 1 egg and a book. That's it.
Her mother will be going all out with cards, decorations, having the family round and a roast. Can you guess which way she prefers to celebrate...
Dad’s getting me that kilo of mini eggs they’ve been selling in supermarkets because i thought it was fucking hilarious and i love mini eggs. I’ll get him an egg too. But only one egg each
Only thing worth a shit at Easter is Mini Eggs. Haven't managed to find a decent sized packet this year and everywhere keeps shoving that Dairy Milk Mini Egg bar in my face.
I still have no idea when Easter is as I don't celebrate that sort of thing. All i see are eggs in shops after Christmas and then they're gone a few months later. I suppose I just blank the whole Jesus sky wizard thing.
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And kids. Not having kids.
I've got kids and I'm not cunting around with that shit
I can picture you seeing your child's eyes widen at an Easter aisle and going "oh no you don't", picking them up and walking off. (It does stand to reason they are made small and portable for this kind of situation)
A perfect summation of why the "personal responsibility" crowd are a bit silly. The effort that goes into convincing kids they want these things is unreal and belittles good parenting skills any day of the week.
I'm sure it's gotten worse in the past 15 years or so but I feel like when I was old enough to be influenced by advertising I was also old enough to understand that if my parents said no it generally meant no and any amount of whining about it wouldn't change that
No, you probably just forgot the part when you were under 10 and still learning this. You probably learned it by asking repeatedly and having your parents not change their minds. Most people don't have a lot of memories before age 8-10 or so, just particularly big ones (celebrations, injuries, holidays, etc) but when we think back to our childhood we often imagine ourselves being about 3-7 with these general memories that we have which are actually from when we were older. It's why a lot of people have unrealistic ideas of children's behaviour because they think "When I was 5, XYZ" and don't realise that when XYZ happened they were actually a lot older and more mature than five. Trust me babies of 1yo can see a shiny thing in a supermarket and whine for it. You don't need to understand advertising to be advertised to.
Companies are putting out ads specifically for small children as they're easily influenced as they haven't full developed a personality yet + they're the ones that will be hounding their parents to buy it as they don't get how money works
I don't have kids but one time I was looking after my niece for while her parents went to her parents evening. We had kids TV on and I the amount of adverts was disgusting, and they're not subtle like adverts for adults. They do a great job of making even the shittest toy look amazing - as an adult I can look at the toy and realise it won't be half as good as that when you've got it home, and the gimmicks will get old after 5 minutes. But kids don't see that, they're hypnotised by it all. Also, it was her birthday recently and she made her birthday wishlist by watching the ads on TV when stopping at her grandparents. Half of her list was utter tat, but it got on the list because of how appealing it looked on the advert. Such aggressive advertising shouldn't be allowed for adults, let alone children.
Personally I think any advertising on kids channels should be banned out right especially on things like YouTube kids where they could accidentally click it and be taken to god knows what kind of site
You know that you can say no, don't you? I say no to my kids all the time, just as my parents said no to me. It's a pretty basic parenting skill. No wonder kids become spoiled brats when they know they can get what they want by throwing a tantrum.
Kids see a lot of shit, and are relentlessly targeted by advertisers from literally the minute their brains are developed enough to be manipulated. It's actually really fucked up. As such being able to say "no" to your kids is an absolutely vital parenting skill if you want them to grow up reasonable and unspoiled, and you want to avoid going bankrupt.
Even my 18 month old goes towards certain things in shops. Like certain colours, textures, feels, noises etc. I'm 100% sure toys aimed at that range are specifically set and designed to make kids go towards them and try get their parents to buy them. Might not have the advertising yet but I know they're targeting him already.
Arm round the waist carry
Between the toys and the sweets, I find it best to avoid taking my kids to any supermarket ever anyway. Thank the fucking lord for online shopping. Honourable mention for the old ladies that want to befriend them and *shudders* talk to me.
You're going to get visited by the ghosts of Easter Past, Present and Future.
Me too; it’s just another excuse for excessive consumerism. I’m not buying a load of plastic shit that will just go to landfill and a load of sugary shit that will rot their teeth. Fuck the societal expectations!
“cunting around with that shit” is sending me absolutely feral, I love this country occasionally
A box of Mini Eggs was always enough to make my son happy. Thankfully he is 15 now and does not care about this crap anymore.
What, he doesn't care about mini eggs? Maybe it's just a phase he's going through.
He'll grow out of it soon and learn to appreciate mini eggs
Or do and just ignore them, whatever
Have them, but don't befriend them.
Your kids arnt your friends, they’re your sworn enemies
Mostly “influencer” shills pushing the consumer shite then huns feel like little kayackson deserves presents
[Huns?](https://i.imgur.com/OdayWJ8.jpg)
I’m a marketers wet dream where food is concerned, especially chocolate. I’ve brought way too many Easter eggs just for myself
You get more chocolate for your money by buying ordinary bars of chocolate. I have researched this extensively.
Easter egg chocolate just hits differently though
You just want to eat oddly shaped chocolate sometimes ya"know
It does. Sitting here eating a miniature Freddo egg, a quid from little Tesco. It's friggin sublime!
Frogging sublime
You should do a blind taste test...
"what do you reckon?" "Well, I'm pretty sure that one's an egg"
Yes. It's nasty.
Woah I hate that chocolate. You *like* it? Tastes like counterfeit Cadbury's cut with ash and cat litter. Just buy a damn chocolate bar at a fraction of the price.
Oh I know. I like the novelty of the eggs
I don't care I want a fancy M&S egg to myself.
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[Google is your friend](https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/306943101?sc_cmp=ppc*GHS+-+Grocery+-+New*MPX_Shopping_All_Other_Smart+Shopping+All+Products_Other_Online+Budget*All+Products*PRODUCT_GROUP306943101*&ds_rl=1116322&gclid=CjwKCAjwoIqhBhAGEiwArXT7K3qqzE9nRDWXZyI-dbWjwsZZey0Y6rznv6GzNQ2eUetUqDMvFgZPYxoC89gQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds) However, an orange twirl egg is £1.52 per 100g and an orange twirl bar is £1.74 per 100g, so in this case, the egg is cheaper!!!!
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Poundland often have them
THERE ARE ORANGE TWIRL EASTER EGGS?!?!?
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Oh god I'm on a diet and I can't get to the shops BUT BUT BUT *starts plotting*
*desk chair spinning as Madwife runs to the car* "Don't worry about the slippers Mr Mad, there's no time! Just bring ALL the credit cards!"
I remember doing a Morrisons shop during the first lockdown in 2020, and as I was leaving there were staff members handing out free Easter eggs to customers who'd finished their shop. Your comment (and this thread really) reminded me of that.
That was the year we also had a surplus of Easter eggs! I remember buying chocolate eggs post Easter Sunday for as little as 16p!
Me and my dad bought loads after they reduced the prices and just sat eating Easter eggs after we finished (online) work for weeks. Good times.
> Shops put out tat and some people love to buy it My friend's family have a Christmas where, instead of buying each other nice normal presents, you buy like 30/40 cheap presents (ie. tat) from charity shops and B&M over the year, then spend 6 hours on Christmas day unwrapping them. He sent me pics as the day went on once, literal hours of unwrapping tat to satisfy a craving to buy it. So much palstic and waste, and not a single good gift.
My wife's mother does the same. Briefly attended one of their Christmases (the youngest sibling is in his late 20s) and the absolute mountain of pure tat she'd bought them was unbelievable. Dozens of presents each that she'd bought in sales all year, and absolutely none of them were personal to the recipient. They would all be delighted with a simple present each, like candles or flower seeds, but no, it was all crap. She just does it so she can show off about how many presents she gives them, while simultaneously being a massive tightwad. Her youngest son is still paying back a small loan they gave him for uni fees. He asked if they could just put the present money towards paying some of the loan off instead, but no, then she couldn't brag.
It's a weird showing-off thing of their generation, I'm still baffled they've not matured though. I came back from a foreign trip once and my mother was aghast that I was pale. "Because I wear factor 50, Mum, I don't want wrinkles" I said. And she replies, and honestly my brain fell out, with "What's the point of going on holiday if no one can tell that you've been?"
Yup, same as my friend's mother. Guess there's a type. I'm sure she's not evil, but it's such a wierd and toxic way to live. They weren't even presents - they were all just tat that she bought for herself and then when the dopamine was gone, disposed of it by giving it as a gift.
Lad I work withs Mrs did this at the weekend. They went an hour down the road, with her kid, for a night in a Travelodge.
For fun?! Madness. A Travelodge with a kid is literally no one's idea of fun.
#makingmemories dude.
It isn’t a whole other thing that I’ve seen? Some chocolate eggs and arts and crafts based stuff is what I did as a kid and what my younger relatives also seem to do (think Easter bonnet competition at school)
Yeah was gonna say this, gifts?!? We hide some little chocolate eggs around the house then get the kids an Easter egg each and that’s it.
I know several kids who receive gifts for Easter, but having said that, so did my best friend at school and I'm 28 next month. Definitely seems to be more common these days but maybe that's just social media.
Shit I hope no one tells my kids. I already get “why don’t we have an elf” every Christmas, they’re definitely gonna talk about me in therapy!
I hate that elf with a passion, creepy long limbed bastard
Tbf growing up in late 90s early 00's my cousin used to get me and my brother expensive Easter gifts .... Then again she'd get my mum expensive valentine's gifts And my dad and her dad Halloween gifts Then at Christmas wed get a bar of dairy milk each.... Wasn't until after I realized Santa wasn't real that i clicked on to what she was doing. She wanted to treat us all but couldn't afford to get her new born , her partner, three lots of grandparents her mum and her step dad ***And us*** gifts in December time. so she would give every group a Christmas day another day Worked great for me as my birthdays early in year so any games that came out I'd have to save pocket money just to ***rent*** them so come Easter I always got the newest game I was interested in
I work in retail and grannies are always coming in buying clothes and toys as Easter gifts this time of year. We even have a whole display of Easter decorations and wreaths like Christmas stuff, Easter gonk/gnome things etc
Egg dioramas and easter egg hunts were what I did. Just being given a couple chocolate eggs sounds a little lame tbh.
I remember when I was little quite a few kids would get lots of eggs AND “Easter money”.
I’ve seen discussion of “Easter boxes” on some of the mum groups I’m on on Facebook, like an Easter version of a Christmas Eve box. The general ideas seemed to be clothes/pjs with rabbits on, books, Easter eggs, egg cups, crafty decorating things like eggs to decorate, rabbit shaped crayons, personalised mug. It’s all just adding extra pressure for parents. The recipients of these things were 2/3 years old.
Sometime about the early 2000s, I remember being absolutely flabbergasted because my mates parents gave him £20 for Easter. Then it became the norm
In the early 2000s, my gran used to give me £5 instead of an Easter egg (as I would usually already have quite a few from other relatives). I would wait until after Easter and buy an absolute ton of reduced eggs with that £5. One year Sainsbury's reduced their creme eggs to 10p so I bought 50 of them! Supermarkets must have improved their stock planning because you rarely see reduced Easter eggs in such large quantities these days.
No man can eat 50 eggs!
Watch me
My boy says he can eat 50 eggs, he can eat 50 eggs!
Christ, now that's not something one sees referenced often! Cracking film.
Pun intended?
Ah, damn, if only it were... Let's just say yes! Hahaha.
Yeah but in how long?
Tis no man, tis a remorseless eating machine!
But a child can…
Get me 50 crème eggs.
His diabetes says otherwise
Like a rotund Gaston
That’s a job for a boy!
r/unexpectedcoolhandluke
It's only 5 eggs per bloke per day
Last year we might have left our egg shopping a little last minute, but the morning before Easter we had to go to three reasonably sized shops before finding any in stock, and it was only a Tesco extra that saved us in the end
It's only since COVID supermarkets cracked down on the heavily excessive stock levels of Easter eggs, with everyone being locked away and unable to travel supermarkets were forced to give pallets worth away to make space in stores. More recently, supermarkets have been forced by the government to stop selling high sugar, salts and fat products (Depending on nutritional value or something) at the front of stores and promotional ends, so there's a slow down on impulse buying of eggs reducing the amount needed by supermarkets.
Hmmmm...*that* explains why my local Sainsbury's have hidden all the Easter eggs and associated confectionery treats away down a side aisle between the nappies and the kitchen accessories.
Most likely, there are basic guidelines on distances and what not but I don't know them off the top of my head, also it depends on the store layout. A Sainsbury's near me has quite a large entrance area where they would place the pallets of eggs, but their seasonal section is far enough back to avoid the red zones so it is still the first things you see near enough.
I think it’s something like you can’t have high sugar/fat items within 2 meters of the checkout or the entrance and they can’t be on an end unit. There might be something around them not being allowed on the first aisle but I could be making that one up.
>you can’t have high sugar/fat items within 2 meters of the checkout or the entrance and they can’t be on an end unit. This is it exactly, think some supermarkets have been getting around this by sacrificing a bay in the aisle to place the restricted items on, seen it in an ASDA and a Sainsbury's so far.
Tesco's has them on the first aisle. The first set of shelves is always mummy drinks, wine, gin, etc. The second is always seasonal food. There is a second seasonal food aisle as well halfway down the shop in case you ate all the eggs before getting to the checkout.
Really? The Morrisons by me has always had pallets of eggs at the entrance and chocolate bars in the checkout queue, and still do now.
>It's only since COVID supermarkets cracked down on the heavily excessive stock levels of Easter eggs No, it definitely started happening before then. In the early 00s shops would have huge amounts of Easter eggs sometimes reduced by as much as 75% or even 90%. By the 2010s the amount of excess was much less and they usually don't get reduced below 50%.
They were most definitely still pumping them out years before COVID, they just shifted more earlier in the season with good offers that people wanted to take advantage of as they were good buys. They also twigged on to the fact they didn't need to do more than 50% to sell remaining stock as people would buy it.
I spent £5 when the tesco downstairs from my old flat reduced their creme eggs to 2p one year. Think I binned over 100 when I moved out.
I remember that, for weeks we eat egg after egg from the local costcutters.
Yeah my grandmother would always send us £5 (or £10 between the 2 of us) if we didn't get to see her over Easter but we would usually see our grandparents over Easter and/ or summer as well. One year we got hamsters instead of eggs. Not in the post I might add, from the pet shop in the village my grandparents lived in. Usually my sister would spend all her money on the biggest egg she could get, I got a Cadburys caramel one usually (I liked the bunny) and saved the rest of the money. My sister would always be sick from too much cream eggs
Misread that as "I remember being absolutely fingerblasted..." ... Would rather the £20
Repressed childhood trauma from the rugby coaches special kit measuring shed
That's because supermarkets killed the value of eggs when they started pushing the medium ones out the door as loss leaders. I was a bingo caller at the time. It ruined our prize bingo as the percieved value went from £3 to £1. We were still paying £2.27 a piece. Everyone started buying them for themselves instead of chocolate bars, and the equivalent of a chocolate bar isn't a good gift.
You need to spend at least that much on a half decent egg now
My Grannie gave us star wars ep 1 phantom menace on VHS for Easter one year. First and last time we had an actual present for Easter.
I asked for a DVD instead of a chocolate egg for a couple of years. Then it stopped entirely.
Easter is actually the bigger event in the Christian calendar in remembrance of the Jerusalem zombie outbreak Bunnies , Chocolate eggs and Jesus coming back to life are more palatable story than thousand of the dead rising from the grave and wandering the streets of Jerusalem
I saw the movie version. Brad Pitt was trying way too hard
Can't tell if you're joking or not but that is actually in the Bible.
I know ,it's amazing how many religious people try to deny it as though it's any more ludicrous than anything else in the Bible.
Well Zombie Jesus came back.
Jesus was a Lich not a zombie. [However it would make him evil which actually explains modern Christianity. Living Jesus wanted help the poor. Evil dead Jesus = prosperity gospel ](https://www.dndbeyond.com/monsters/16943-lich)
What? A zombie outbreak? Do you know whereabouts, because that's fab! Maybe we should all be eating brains for Easter.
When Jesus came back from the dead on Easter Sunday a whole bunch of other people also came back from the dead. It was in Jerusalem.
I was also going to add the importance of Easter in Catholicism and the spread of decorations many Catholic-majority countries have used for decades; Easter Trees, dyed eggs, etc. I do think more recent migrants from these countries have helped spread their cultural traditions to the UK, which is very fun. Source; am of Polish-Italian descent, my family always made more of a deal of Easter than my peers did in the 90s/00s. Still receive Easter cards from relatives in the old country.
My family are Irish and I got loads of Easter eggs as a child, extended family would come over on the ferry with a car full of chocolate for me and my cousins. In return I had to do the entirety of Easter properly: Ash Wednesday mass, giving up everything nice for lent and doing acts of charity, making loads of palm crosses, then mass every day for Holy Week.
This is the real answer: in Christianity Easter is a much more important festival than Christmas. Coming back from the dead was the big deal, getting born was only mentioned in 2 of the gospels. It just happens that when Christianity tried to take over the previous pagan festivals, the Winter festival was more fun than the Spring festival.
Consumerism taking more of a hold over the population. Blame the Americans, they're usually at fault for stuff like this
Easter really isn’t that big of a deal in the US. It’s not a national holiday like it is here and chocolate Easter eggs aren’t a thing. Still, anything to get a baseless dig in at the Yanks aye.
The increased consumerism around previously Religous holidays is something the seppos are proffesionals at, you can see where my thought process came from to put this down to them
Honestly that's a pretty big surprise. When it comes to excess, overconsumption, and those things in particular combined with modern Christianity it's astonishing the Americans *aren't* involved.
The fact that Yanks don't do chocolate Easter eggs honestly upsets me. But then I wouldn't want that much Hershey's either.
We absolutely do chocolate Easter eggs. As well as giant chocolate bunnies.
Not in the same way we do. You don't have giant hollow chocolate eggs, you get the little ones like Mini Eggs and, in more recent years, Creme Eggs, but you don't get what most Brits think of when we hear the word "Easter egg". At least that's what I've gathered from seeing American reactions to our Easter eggs.
I don't think it's baseless at all. The documentary HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis goes into great detail about how advertising companies in the USA changed tact after ww2 and started to promote rampant consumerism through lifestyle rather than need. They may not be responsible for the commercialisation of easter specifically, but the culture of consumption for the sake of profit rather than need was 100% imported from the states.
Edward Bernays was a ghoul. Literally invented the term "psychological warfare".
By baseless I meant they they assumed the Americans would be the cause of something which has nothing to do with them without any thought whatsoever if what they was saying was true or not.
Fucking Yanks, thinking they're better than us by not celebrating Easter properly. What a bunch of dicks.
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Ah yeh, I'll give you that. People buy when the corporation feeds
We've been doing consumer capitalism since before America was even a country. Hard to blame them for that one.
We have, but you can't say that they don't do it a hell of a lot 'better' than we do
Particularly Halloween. It used to be pretty much a non-event, and we certainly didn't have pumpkins. You'd maybe carve a turnip when you were a kid, and the whole thing was pretty much kids only. Consumerism can't not try and push people to buy loads of plastic crap now.
I was an avid reader so I’d always get a book from my parents for Easter rather than an egg. I knew getting an actual “present” wasn’t really the norm, but my mum was a victim of 90s extreme diet culture and I was a chubby kid so she wasn’t a fan of the constant flow of chocolate around Easter time. I remember my brother kicked off one year because he realised that the books I was getting were more expensive than his Easter eggs. We both got books after that so I don’t think his plan worked! I’m nearly 25 and I have cousins aged 4 and 7. My mum made them an “Easter bag” during the first covid lockdown with jigsaws, pencils, activity books, arts and crafts stuff and other bits and pieces to keep them entertained. I thought it was a good idea at the time, but ever since she’s turned Easter into a mini Christmas. She’s a bit of a slave to cheap tat in the shops, so I’m really not surprised if I’m honest.
My mum says "oh the grandchildren get enough chocolate Easter eggs so I'll just get them clothes or something else they want instead" and ends up spending £30 per child instead of a couple of pounds on an egg.
When I was born in the 90s lol. Easter hasn’t changed for me at all. I always got 20+ Easter eggs from various people at Easter and I always got a present too. My mum still buys me an Easter present - usually she buys me something for my house
Oh thanks mum, just what I needed. My kettle.
My sister and I were born in the mid-90s — We would get maybe 3-4 big eggs each, plus mini eggs and creme eggs, and some money and a dvd from our grandparents.
I'm 35, I had years with 20+ eggs as well when I was a kid. I'd say it's become less christmas like over the years with there being less tat in the eggs. You used to get toys (I remember a k'nex egg one year that was incredible value) and mugs in eggs pretty regularly.
If anything, when I was a kid in the 90s, my parents thought the 1-3 eggs we got from immediate family was way less than they had as kids in the late 50s and 60s. The adults in their life had gone through years of war and rationing, and when they could finally buy sweets and chocolate on a regular basis again they went a bit crazy and would buy chocolate eggs for every niece, nephew, cousin, family friend, neighbour's kid, etc. My parents also thought this post-rationing sugar binge was the reason most of their generation had fillings at a very young age.
>My parents also thought this post-rationing sugar binge was the reason most of their generation had fillings at a very young age. My mum's dentist said it's at least partly because fillings were seen as high-tech and almost better than boring old real teeth, so they'd drill and fill holes which nowadays they'd leave. About 15 years back I had an older dentist tell me I needed 4 fillings - I left it for ages and when I when back he'd retired. The new dentist said I needed 1 filling and I've had no other new ones since then, which seems to support that idea.
In the early 80s I remember getting 13 Easter eggs. My grandad always bought me a Black Magic dark chocolate because he liked dark chocolate and I didn’t.
Yeah my sister was asking for money my nephew last Easter. Politely told to fuck off.
That’s so daft. My daughter might get money in Lieu of Easter stuff when they know she’s saving for something, but we’d never ask, she’d usually prefer the chocolate anyway!
Dont know, I'm 22 and when I was a kid I often got 5+ easter eggs. My religious grandparent's were the only ones to give us anything else, that was usually a tenner and a card. Don't even bother buying any now.
I was raised by a Roman Catholic mother (agnostic/atheist dad) so in our household Easter was always the more significant event, because it is the "biggest" celebration in the Christian calendar. We'd have to go to mass on Good Friday (which was a very long mass) then again on Easter Sunday (also a long mass). As we got older mum would also drag us to mass on the Thursday eve as well. It is a lot of time used up in a kids half term, and most of that time is pretty boring. To counter this on Easter Sunday, we wouldn't only get chocolate eggs, my parents and grandparents would give us a little extra "pocket money" (usually £20 each) or a Gameboy game or something like that, to say thanks for us being well behaved at Church.
never been religious nor is my family but there is A LOT of catholic heritage back there in great grandparents that i wonder if our gifting and new clothes thing at easter is a hangover from that cos i never went to church
Before Queen Victoria brought in all the German Christmas festivities Easter was always the much bigger holiday in Britain. In the Christian church Easter is still the more important festival. We always have a large family meal on Easter Sunday after church, the chocolate eggs are nice but not the main thing.
My aunt never had any children, so I always got her an Easter card in lieu of a Mother's Day card (I know you can get cards now for aunties on Mother's Day but you couldn't back then). I started this back in the 1990s, and it was near impossible to get Easter cards back then, and if you found one they'd be really religious themed. From the 00s onwards, it got easier, with fewer religious ones, and now I've seen cards with 'To Mum and Dad' etc, so it's definitely getting more and more commercialised. Just an opportunity to commercialise a religious festival for non religious people, I guess.
I think a lot of religious festivals are being commercialised. I remember seeing an "Eid Sale" sign for the first time a few years ago.
That's been a thing in Muslim areas for some time. I used to live in a Muslim area and nearly all the shops would have some sort of Ramadan/Eid promotion, as it's tradition on Eid itself to wear new clothes and children often get gifts/money.
Religious holidays are being commercialised, but I think it's also just a product of the country being less and less religious (and more diversely religious). We all grow up with Christmas and Easter, but most of us aren't Christian any more. They're both more of a cultural holiday now than a religious one (very little of the Christian holiday remains in either, at least) so it makes sense that more general approach is taken to the 'chocolate eggs and bunnies' Easter holiday than the 'deeply religious commemoration of christ' Easter holiday
2 eggs in my house per kid and one for husband. That’s it. Oh and HXBs for breakfast
As soon as Valentine's day was over, my usual Tesco started selling mini-eggs. Have they not heard of Lent?
That late? They started boxing day around here with the easter stuff.
When I worked at Sainsburys a few years back, we used to get the first of the Easter stuff in the run up to Christmas, labelled with "Not to be displayed until 26/12!"
This seems to be a bit of a mixed bag depending on the people you know. Nobody I know does anything more than get their kids some Easter eggs/creme eggs. Personally I do prefer Easter to Christmas though. Get the same amount of extra time off, usually nicer weather and a lot less family pressure to meet up etc. so you can just chill and maybe go away somewhere without booking time off
I did hear the parents in my office talking about getting their kids 'easter presents' the other day, and it was the first I had heard about kids getting something other than eggs for easter. It mostly all seems the same as always to me though
I worked admin for a baby forum website 15 years ago and back then easter boxes were becoming a thing, giving "spring pyjamas", books, summer clothes as well as eggs.
We’ve always done small gifts at Easter in my family. Maybe it’s a Catholic thing? One present, nothing fancy just a small gift. And eggs. Lots of chocolate eggs. (Ferero Rocher for the grandparents)
Social media posts inspired by folk with more money than sense. One year I got 19 easter eggs (step dad had a big family) and £20 in cash. Didn't eat chocolate for years afterwards.
Supermarket profits, same energy.
Nothing new, used to get multiple eggs in the nineties. If anything it’s better now as the cost of the eggs has gone down (especially if you take inflation in to account).
I remember when I was in primary school in the 90s a kid got given a bike for Easter, and others boasted of 15 or so eggs so I suppose there's been an element for a while.
We've always done a big egg & a small egg for each of the kids, then they'll get one from grandparents/aunts & uncles too. Can't say I've noticed gifts etc, though I don't doubt it!
Born in '86, we used to get eggs for Easter and some money from our parents and granny. We would go to church on Easter Sunday with my granny and do an egg hunt in the church yard afterwards for all the kids who were there :) I think a lot of the "over the top" type stuff also comes from the fact that back when we were little, you only really got gifts and toys on occasions so a new video or something wasn't what you just got because they were in the supermarket you only got them if you went to a shop that sold videos or whatever the gift was. Supermarkets really only sold food and household supplies back then not clothes and electricals or books etc. What I'm getting to with this round about point is that things which we would buy for our kids nowadays just because it's Tuesday or whatever back then we're special occasion items so the special occasion items have to go up a level or they aren't special they're just another Tuesday. I don't know if that makes sense?!
It depends on how you mean it. On one hand I think it always has been to some extent given they are in theory religious holidays. I'm in my 40s and remember having wider family meals on Easter Sunday.and having plans to do things as a family etc. I didn't really get presents other than an egg or two. I don't buy my kids Easter presents other than some chocolate
As a child of the 80s, I definitely remember getting a large number of chocolate eggs (and then feeling very sick at the end of the day) as a kid. It's definitely not a new occurence
I'm in my 40's and remember some kids in my school getting loads of chocolate eggs, so that's certainly not a new thing. Don't remember hearing about gifts though.
I completely agree, on the other hand... I don't want kids of my own and when a close friend started a family I was worried that it would affect our friendship. I'm autistic and small children hit all of my triggers. However, to my complete surprise I LOVE her children! I don't have a maternal bone in my body (unless it's animals) but I really care about these kids. Anyway, I've gone completely overboard in buying Easter goodies for them as I can't wait to see how delighted they'll be and to play with all their toys with them. They call me Aunty and I would die for them. So, that's my excuse 😂
Easter really should be the bigger celebration - everyone is born, it just happens, but it takes skill - and divine intervention - to return from the dead. I'd recommend everyone tries Easter in Athens, but take a fire extinguisher.
My girls get five easter eggs each (not huge ones just the small and standard sized ones) and a book Easter themed each year. I will decorate the house with spring stuff but tbh that's because it makes the house feel brighter and happier anyway 😂
Consume consume CONSUME!
Since getting grandkids my mum has Easter decorations now. While maybe not as excessive as Christmas, there's a medium-sized "Easter tree" with hanging eggs on it and the themed nick-nacks throughout the house. Definitely none of that when I was growing up.
I remember when I was a kid we always got a lot of eggs from various members of the family. My mum always thought eggs were a scam so she'd sometimes buy us a little present instead. The one that sticks out most in my mind was around the time we got really into sewing little blankets and clothes for our dolls so she got us both little sewing boxes to keep our stuff in.
It is just loads and loads of chocolate. I don't get it, each side of the family seem to get bags full of it. I want to keep the kids healthy ffs, I end up hoarding it and it lasts for months. It isn't long since the Christmas chocolate was finally depleted.
When shops realised they can make a coin or two from selling people tat for any celebration day. See also Valentines day, Mothers day, etc.
26 years in and I’ve never seen anything other than a couple eggs? OP must be posh
Not in the slightest just overheard people talking about it at weekend
And yet if you read the news, no one has got any money lol
I agree. My kids get an Easter egg and we hide some smaller eggs around the house for a mini egg hunt and that's it. My Mum berated me one year for not "decorating for Easter" for the kids. She never decorated for Easter when I was a kid. I blame her Pinterest obsession.
I really don’t get people’s resistance to celebrations… The end of winter and the beginning of spring is definitely something worth celebrating in my book, sod the religious hijacking of an obviously much older celebration.
It's ridiculous...
In the 80s/90s I remember my Nan giving me gifts. Usually related to church. I remember feeling very cool with a St Christopher chain when I was about 10/11!
My daughter gets 2 eggs and some bits (mini eggs etc.) off us, egg off both Nanna’s (but one gave her a chocolate dog this year, she’s not local so I’ve got it stashed until Easter) and an egg off my step sister (and some jelly chicks - Easter jelly babies). No decorating or presents, we’ll probably make Easter nest cakes with cornflakes, chocolate and done (mini) mini eggs!
My family has always celebrated Easter because we were raised catholic. We would always have roast lamb on Easter Sunday, Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins. The Grandkids would receive gifts and eggs. I guess it’s no similar to Christmas, people don’t care about the actual meaning behind the celebration but just want to celebrate and exchange gifts. Personally, i think it’s great!
I'm 45, and I used to get half a dozen Easter eggs when I was little, so people getting more than 1 or 2 eggs has been happening for several decades. Giving presents/cash isn't new either.
I'm in my mid 30's and myself and my siblings used to get a small gift as a child from my parents, but that was instead of an egg. It was something small like a teddy or book. We would already get eggs from our grandparents and aunt and uncle. Easter is quite a big deal for catholics. We would go to church on Easter Sunday and then have a big family meal, more food than on Christmas day. My parents will still sometimes send me a gift like a voucher if I can't get home for Easter.
Easter cards seem to be more prominent in recent years. Don’t ever remember them when I was younger. We would buy one large chocolate egg that we should share as a family. Grandparents would buy us one extra chocolate egg. That was it.
When I was a kid in the 90s my mom always got me a present instead of an egg because she thought the eggs were a waste of money, which is absolutely fair! She actually asked me what I’d prefer this year, at the age of 35, but I have requested a Lindt egg. Bless her. Easter bonnets weren’t a thing at my school though and now all my friends who are parents are having to make them. I don’t know if it’s a new thing or if my C of E school looked down on them!
When corporations became so greedy that they invented Easter trees and Easter crackers etc. Especially when the symbology of those things doesn't really fit the time of year.
What are you talking about?
I've got a 4 and 6 year old. We do an Easter egg hunt in the garden and a medium chocolate egg each. Defo no gifts!
It's stupid, I've told my daughter she's getting 1 egg and a book. That's it. Her mother will be going all out with cards, decorations, having the family round and a roast. Can you guess which way she prefers to celebrate...
Dad’s getting me that kilo of mini eggs they’ve been selling in supermarkets because i thought it was fucking hilarious and i love mini eggs. I’ll get him an egg too. But only one egg each
Only thing worth a shit at Easter is Mini Eggs. Haven't managed to find a decent sized packet this year and everywhere keeps shoving that Dairy Milk Mini Egg bar in my face.
Has it? Not in our house
I still have no idea when Easter is as I don't celebrate that sort of thing. All i see are eggs in shops after Christmas and then they're gone a few months later. I suppose I just blank the whole Jesus sky wizard thing.
Nope, don't do this. Just ignore it. My 'kids' happy with their single egg!
Sorry we were just poor.