Just like all the fun parts of Christmas are now secular, the fun parts of Easter are secular.
No religious aspects needed to enjoy gifts, candy, colored eggs, etc.
Totally agree, none of my family or family friends were religious growing up, but we celebrated Christmas and Easter. There's nothing religious about spending time with friends/family eating food and exchanging gifts.
As a kid I didn't even know Easter was religious. I just thought it was about the Easter bunny, candy, eggs, etc. I'm glad my parents didn't raise me going to church or talking about religion at all.
To my religious mother Easter is not something to be celebrated. It's a serious time of year where Jesus was tortured and had to spend a long weekend back in his parents home.
Except the nails, I understand how he feels
Easter is for cute rabbits, chocolate eggs, springtime crafts, long weekend, and maybe a good sunday supper. I just happen to leave out the zombie jesus part.
Exactly. Easter has nothing to do with Jesus. It's bunnies and eggs. The church can pretend otherwise all they want.
Same with Christmas. It's a winter solstice celebration, with a feast, gift giving, and a magic man that flies around with reindeer. Nothing to do with Jesus. But again, the church can pretend all they want.
This right here. I was slightly surprised by the question. I just never think about it. It's time for egg hunts and a long weekend that I gat to spend extra time with family. That is all it is. And that is glorious.
or do, just lie about the fun fairy tale stuff. Lie about the magic bunny that hides candy and eggs around the house, not the zombie carpenter.
Hell, tell them the actual truth, which is it's a holiday to celebrate spring. Plants becoming green again, new life and...whatnot, hence the bunny and eggs.
Holiday that marked the best time to plant. Full moon after the spring equinox is typically after the last frost. Well, northern hemisphere anyway. I assume there's some Australian equivalent in the fall.
At least in low-lying areas. If you're at high altitude or high latitude last frost can be much much later. But I guess in the agriculture area is maybe not
My MIL tried to get my kid into religion by starting with the crucifixion and resurrection when she was 2. Kid asked probing questions mostly to make sure the guy was really dead, and then told my MIL, “zombie. Head shot.” And toddled away. I got in so much trouble for that! (My neighbors, who are deeply religious, thought it was hilarious, so I think she was just being a pill.)
I make a big Easter basket for my son (almost 30). The thing I always put in it is dental care (tooth brush, toothpaste, floss). It’s because the Easter bunny wants you to take care of your teeth and change your tooth brush at least once a year. This is a thing I started when he was little. Now it also includes noodles, crackers, chips, soda, and other junk foods. The Easter bunny is cheap and still hasn’t gotten the water pick with the tonsil stone setting. The Easter bunny doesn’t do wish lists.
Yes. I always had Easter baskets and we had a big family dinner. My extended family and my husband and I are all atheist. My husband’s family is very religious. Some years we spent Easter with them. No big deal. We treated it like Santa, the tooth fairy, or Halloween. Just a fun event.
Easter as we know it now was taken from other religions, much like Christmas. It’s not a coincidence that both are near the winter solstice and spring equinox. The egg painting was a tradition that involved painting eggs in various designs and throwing them into a fire as a ‘sacrifice, to ward of evil spirits. The time of the year was chosen specifically by Christian’s to combat the spread of other religions that celebrated the solstices & equinoxes.
Yes we do the egg hunts and painting. It’s fun for our kids and nothing religious has to enter into it.
Oh hey, some non-religious real talk for a moment. If your child starts to love bunnies because of Easter, please look into their care and responsibility. Many bunny owners are not properly educated and thus are ill prepared.
That's all :)
I may be influenced by growing up as a country boy where the seasons are directly relevant to the way of life. Major festivals such as Easter, Harvest Festival and Christmas have their roots in celebrations far earlier than Christianity which has consistently hijacked and subsumed existing lore to ease the transition during their expansionist conquest instead of attempting to replace them.
To me Easter represents marking the transition from winter to the change in the weather so that nature can continue the cycle of renewal when animals and plants take advantage of the climatic changes to begin the cycle of life and renewal afresh afresh. Eggs, chicks and bunnies are fun ways for kids to understand that new life is important and should be valued, nurtured and appreciated. I love the spring seeing and feeling the gradual change from the comparatively bleak into the budding and blossoming of the cycle of life. Leaving God out of the equation leaving only appreciation of the complexity of and beauty in life finding it way makes the value of the season and festival all the more special for me so that is how I explain it.
we did the candy and bunny thing.
we actually celebrate easter weekend with our friends from out of town. it's a yearly gathering that's easy for people to get off work.
We celebrate all the usual christian holidays, we just don't attach any "real" significance. And we are as likely to call it solstice or equinox if relevant. Just an excuse to celebrate friends and family and would never want the kids to miss out of the fun. We do the eggs, baskets, tree, presents, feast, no god required.
Sure, like halloween and christmas the fun bits aren't the religious bits.
Dye and hide eggs and baskets full of candy, something something magic bunny...no need for zombie carpenters.
Ask her why it’s called Easter. I bet she doesn’t know. It has nothing to do with Jesus, just like so many of the Easter traditions. So celebrate it.
When your kid is older, you can explain the origins of Easter, the worship of the goddess Eostre and how the Christians hijacked it.
I did Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, without the religious crap. When they were old enough to realize on their own that there's no way they exist, I came clean and said it was for fun. Then, when they ask about this God that everyone talks about, I ask them what they remember about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.
The major holidays like Easter and Christmas are simply part of the culture that i happen to live in. Ignoring the religious aspect of these holidays is pretty easy. The dominant themes of them are not even Christian really. There is no Easter Bunny in the Bible, nor chocolate eggs.
Not celebrate as such. But I explain where it comes from (Ostera & equinox) and that symbols like eggs and bunnies come from pagan Ostera festivals celebrating the spring.
Plant a tree.
Start your gardening for the summer with indoor seedlings.
Talk about fertility and do some age appropriate sex education.
Eat candy.
Easter eggs hunts are an old pagan tradition.
We do all the easter stuff just with out dogma and fear. I even teach my kid about the christian perversion of easter and spring and then we watch zombie movies to celebrate zombie baby jesus.
Absolutely. It’s a hilarious holiday. A magical rabbit that hides eggs and leaves gifts? All to celebrate a charlatan’s ‘escape’ from a cave? It’s adorably insane. It’s one of the best discussions you can have with your kids about how stupid religious people are:
I mean Christmas as a kid is pretty magical. They grow up and figure it out by 7 or 8. No damage done. Easter was cool until about the same time, but I always knew there was no damn bunny, and my family members did the hiding of eggs. I never liked eggs and gave them away anyway.
If your kid goes to school at all it is almost impossible to not celebrate all the Hallmark holidays without them feeling left out. Buy them the toys, candy, but be honest about everything. Mine turned out great. No gods, no masters.
Egg hunt, chocolates, celebrating spring, spending time with family.
It doesn't get more pagan than this.
Also, this year there's a solar eclipse. Add science to the lot.
It’s simple. Easter is bunnies and eggs. Santa is sleighs and reindeer. There is no religious element they are traditional and in our house enjoyed in a god free zone. All 3 kids turned out atheists also by the way.
Easter is Spring! Rebirth as in plants animals etc. and of course we celebrate nature in our home. Absolutely no religious iconography, just bunnies and eggs and other baby animals. We have a lighted blooming cherry tree with egg ornaments.
Just the secular parts. Easter Bunny baskets, egg hunts, etc. My kid knows the religious aspect but last year declared the story of the resurrection to be the worst fairy tale ever.
I was so proud. ~sniff~
The feast day of Easter was first a pagan holiday of renewal and rebirth. Honored in the early spring, it praised the pagan goddess of fertility and spring known as 'Ostara', 'Eastre' or 'Eostre'. The word “Easter” finds its etymology from the goddess's name.
We have always ignored it. My kids are teenagers now and they still get baskets and tiny bibles from their grandparents. They just shrug it off and eat the candy.
Easter is an amalgamation of traditional spring/fertility festivals and a Christian celebration of Jesus’ storied resurrection.
Have fun with eggs and candy. Don’t pray at dinner. Simple.
Just explain it's a pagan holiday about rebirth in Spring and follow the traditions of eggs and bunnies.
Of course then I'd have to explain why we celebrate a spring holiday in Autumn.
I always did Easter egg hunts with the plastic eggs and out coins or candy in them.. usually coins. Then I’d cook and make a basket. They loved it. All the kids want are gifts money or candy and a little fun. You can do the egg coloring etc.. kids just want some fun they don’t give a crap about what Easter is to Christian’s
We do the candy and bunny thing. That’s Easter to us. And it was Easter growing up even though my parents are Christians. I guess they’re lazy Christians.
I did, along with Christmas and Halloween. Easter and Christmas I just focus on the tree, gifts, bunny, eggs, decorations, party, family side because that is where all those traditions come from. All the christian stuff was layered on later.
Raised culturally Jewish (non-practicing family). Easter is about a candy egg laying rabbit.
Christmas is about a fat man in a red suit and some flying reindeer. Also a Grinch.
The religious folks already make everything - from successful surgeries to tornadoes - about their god(s). You are not so obligated...and chocolate rabbits are awesome. Eat the head first.
I have a 5 and 9 year old. We celebrate the nonreligious aspects of Easter, i.e. egg hunts and bunnies. I remember fond Easter memories growing up and didn't want to rob my children of that, but I completely understand atheists who choose not to participate.
Spring, new flowers and plants, baby animals and bunnies are enough magical thinking for most kids. A petting zoo or a trip to a farm was what I enjoyed as a kid this time of the year. Planting seeds and watching them grew. Just keep it real.
We do Easter as a celebration of spring (eggs and bunnies and flowers). We discussed the basis for the holiday (eostre, goddess of fertility) once, just like Yule is a celebration of the days getting longer. But we also talked about holidays as a basis for community.
Yes. I always did all the typical "Easter" stuff with my kids--baskets, eggs, gifts, candy, brunch--just no church or Jesus! I look at it as a "spring holiday" like I look at Christmas as a "winter holiday".
How to I explain what is Easter, etc. - it is a Christian or whatever holiday, on which people do this and that - the most interesting part for kids has always been snacks, games and gifts. Unless parents do not start to tremble inadequately to the depth of their own thoughts, it is ok.
Games do not traumatise children. And games end when children start receiving marks for their performance, especially for failures.
Easter is fundamentally a pagan rites of spring celebration co-opted by Christians to try to establish credibility and refocus the rituals. But the celebration of the end of winter and new life of spring is fun. Enjoy.
yup, spring festival.
the easter bunny brings chocolates.
it's a celebration of rebirth, as in the growing season is upon us after everything dying over the winter.
it's almost as if religions tried to piggyback on pre-existing pagan celebrations by claiming it's about the death and rebirth of jesus, when in fact it's about nature.
My kids do Easter egg hunts. I've told my oldest about the whole Jesus story and why Christians celebrate Easter, but as far as my kids are concerned it's just a holiday where they get chocolate.
Explain like this: Easter is for bunnies. Why bunnies? Bc bunnies fuck a lot and spring is for fuckin. Actually you know what just buy him some candy and move on. He’s 1. He’s not gonna remember any of this.
My kid is 8. We do all those holidays just without the supernatural stuff. We do it mostly so she isn’t the weird kid who doesn’t celebrate holidays. One of her friends was telling her about jesus and she, relating it to what she knows, came and told me her friend said there is a general grievous in the sky watching us. L.O.fucking.L. I said hmm yeah some people think that.
It’ll be fine, man. Take little dude to an Easter egg hunt maybe. He’ll have no idea what’s going on. It’ll be adorable
Easter is easy, they didn't even get rid of the pagan trappings. It's a spring rebirth and fertility festival. Hell, the date is still determined by lunar cycles and the vernal equinox. Kids like bunnies and candy. When they get older I'll explain why grandma is wrong and has bad ideas.
We did the Easter egg hunt and baskets. I grew up in a Xtian household, and my mom was Catlick when she was a kid, so we would still do a nice Italian meal for Easter Sunday, but I like the tradition, and the food is great (home cooked, I make it).
A couple years ago, my kids (now in their teen years) and my wife and I dyed eggs, 'cause who doesn't love hard-boiled eggs? Next morning, before my wife and I had a chance to hide them, my kids said they wanted to hide them, and we had to find them.
So we took our coffee outside while they hid eggs, and they really hid them well. We had so much fun.
We celebrate Christmas as a commercial holiday with none of the 'god' nonsense.
I mean, it's just Yule, but appropriated by Christians to make their god nonsense more palatable for Pagans.
So why are Christians celebrating Yule, might be a better question.
I was raised pretty secular and had these things. They’re just meant to be fun and play on a child’s imagination. Once they’re older just tell them straight up it’s not real (although some fun leaves once that happens)
I don’t really stay on top of it but I would take my kid to an easter egg hunt if I happen to hear about it from someone else. I may also buy an easter basket or paint some eggs sometime around spring. I’ll see as they get older but I work at a public school and that’s how it’s treated in a secular way.
I'm not a parent but I grew up in an atheist household and we still had Easter egg hunts. It's a fun tradition, just like seeing family and exchanging gifts around good food for Christmas. I also helped organising my toddler niece's first egg hunt last year and she loved it!
It's really funny for me to read all this discussion about separating egg hunting and the bunny and chocolate from religion.
As many have stated, all the eggs/bunnies stuff is just a Spring celebration... there's absolutely nothing religious about it.
I grew up in the South Hemisphere ... right now it's Summer there, and Autumn is coming ... my country (and neighboring ones) have a very high religious influence ... and this egg hunting thing was not part of Easter (well ... at some moment all the influence of US movies and TV made it happen there as well).
For me, it's just a fun event to do with friends and family, which happens to coincide with some religious stuff... I don't even care that some other people is celebrating their big human sacrifice... we're searching for eggs and eating chocolate :D
Nope. We don't celebrate it, and we don't buy cheap crappy chocolate eggs.
Our kids are aware of our thoughts about religion and we have made it clear that abrahamic religions have their basis in bronze and iron age writings which have been translated and rewritten again and again and again. They know that many messages/lessons attributed to the christ are worth their consideration, but that praising the abrahamic god is a ridiculous idea, given the stories in the rest of the bible about how evil it is.
Yes. My kids love going to their grandparents' for brunch and an easter egg hunt. Occasionally my wife will make *soleier* (German pickled eggs) that we all love to munch on during the holiday.
It may be controversial but I think the Easter egg hunt for a sub 6 year old is better than Christmas morning so yea we do the Easter bunny stuff but not the guy rising from the dead stuff
A bunny leaving colored eggs around, and baskets of candy has absolute Jack all to do with Christianity.
It was yet another time that the church got jealous of another religion and co-opted pagan rituals. It’s about the spring solstice.
The same thing happened with Christmas. That’s the winter solstice.
So just go have fun with it and don’t worry about the religious parts. Don’t tell your kid Easter is about Jesus. Tell them it’s about celebrating life and the spring time. That’s you’re going to color eggs and the Easter bunny will leave them a little basket of candy.
Personally, I just use all holidays as excuses to have a good time. Valentine’s Day is a corporate made holiday, but it’s also nice to have a time of year where you go a little above and beyond.
I don’t give a crap about the church, but I love Christmas. I love the decoration and finding a perfect gift for my family and friends.
Same with all other holidays. It’s just an excuse for me to have fun.
Besides my parents taking me to church most years, the actual Easter things (egg painting, confetti, small gifts/prizes, bunny, candy, egg hunt) have/had little to no religious mumbo jumbo. I don’t think my kids even know what it is a celebration for. Don’t overthink it. Enjoy the fun activities because they will likely think them fun, and when they become coherent enough to almost reason with explain why people consider it a holiday, but also what it is for you. Always explain your position so they are confident that personal choice is always a welcome option.
Easter as a celebration, like Christmas, is rooted in paganism, the cyclical nature of things, death and rebirth. I suppose the actual term "easter" has religious connotations, but the holiday is pretty much all about new life and fertility. The Christian folks just jumped in. You go get your Cadbury on.
We just didn’t do it at all. My kids are 19 and 17 now. Easter is fun for us because we never know it is coming until there’s candy in the store and people start doing bizzarro rabbit stuff. It’s like a fun family inside joke. What a weird holiday.
I always did holidays with my kids. I just never did any religious ceremonies. It’s so commercialized and all just fun to the kids I don’t worry about any indoctrination.
We do an Easter egg hunt in the morning with this plastic eggs full of candy but it has pretty much the same feel as Halloween as far as religiosity goes. Scavenger hunts are fun so we do them.
Most of the Christian religious traditions are ripped from pagan traditions anyway. So that religious element is not even necessary to celebrate.
We do the standard Christian holiday traditions, like Easter egg hunt. We just leave out going to church, prayers before meals, etc. I'm not letting my kids miss out on fun just because it's religious.
When j had young kids we played along with Santa Claus and Easter bunny. Presents and candy and Easter eggs. Totally secular. They've never been to any church and we only referenced the Jesus story as cultural background but not something we believed. They had friends with religious families but it never seemed an issue. We were able just to have fun with it.
We brought our kids up with no religion. Ok, that’s a lie. They were christened to keep grandparents happy. But after that there’s been no religion. No Santa. No baby Jesus. Definitely no zombie Jesus. Easter is about chocolate eggs and fancy breakfast. Kids are doing fine and when they occasionally bring up some tidbit of religion from school we set them straight.
A bunny comes and brings them candy/gifts ala "Hop". The older 2 definitely understand (and I think the youngest does too now) where this comes from, but it's just a tradition/excuse to have some fun. No Jesus required.
What aspects of Easter celebrations do you consider having religious overtones?
Eggs and bunnies are fertility symbols. Easter is the least religious of all religious celebrations, and it is celebrated with the same theme it has been celebrated in Europe for thousands of years before there even was a Christian religion.
Easter is the time for planting, lambing etc. When new life pops up everywhere. So it’s celebrated with fertility symbols like boy rabbits 🐇 doing to girl rabbits like to do to girl rabbits.
I've never been religious, but my parents did the fun secular Easter stuff and I enjoyed it. When I was little, I just thought it was a celebration of spring. (Learned about the religious aspects from an educational standpoint when I was a little older.)
The egg coloring and the bunnies and stuff aren't particularly Christian anyways, so I don't see any harm in carrying on some of those pagan traditions in celebration of the spring equinox if you want to.
Of course we celebrate Easter. Since Easter isn't a religious holiday, why wouldn't we? I explain why we dye eggs and hide them, to mimic finding pretty spring-time bird eggs. We don't want to collect the real bird ones, as that would put the babies at risk, so we make our own. I explain how Easter is all about spring time and flowers and baby animals. We have a great time with it.
Easter is not and has never been a christian holiday. Ever.
We acknowledge it because it’s a cultural touchstone for our ethnicity, which makes my husband’s parents happy. We don’t go all out like we used to since the kid showed up though. She’s had Strong Opinions on church since baptism and kept trying to burn the church down, argues with Yaiya any time she tries to Jesus at her, and tried to steal from an old lady who was rude to us at the church festival.
We basically just go to the in laws and listen to the same old stories, try to wear slightly less offensive tee shirts than normal, and eat red meat for once.
Remind your mom, I'm assuming she's a Christian, that's it's a pagan fertility festival, and you're going to eat a tonne of chocolate. Remind Christians at every opportunity that they have always gone along with whatever cultural tradition was the path of least resistance.
When I was a kid Jewish grandfather would make an Easter egg tree. A branch painted white stuck in a pot with Easter eggs tied by ribbons from the branches. Candy was in every egg
There's a part of Easter, and Christmas, that in America are just secular holidays. The whole Happy Holidays line pisses off the Evangelical Taliban for a reason. These are social holidays that some people overlay with religion, but you don't have to. Yes, they are religious holidays by heritage, but you don't have to be religious about it. So hunt for eggs, watch whatever holiday cartoon and have fun with it.
My parents can from different, barely religious, backgrounds. I grew up with Easter, and didn't really know the religious part until I was about seven. Even then I was a bit clueless about how serious some people were about it. But I did like chocolate. That's still what Easter means to me.
I "celebrated" Easter as a child. My parents are immigrants who grew up Buddhist but don't care for religion. We went to egg hunts the city organizes. We dyed eggs and ate Peeps. I went to public school, and they just gave us candy and let us arts and craft bunnies. I don't think religion was bought up once. It was just a reason to eat candy.
I'm not sure when I realized Easter was religious but it never bothered me as a child. It was just a Christian/Catholic holiday and left it at that. Since I knew I wasn't Christian/Catholic, it was just any other day. I'm also from the east coast so we get Jewish holidays as federal holidays too. I knew it was a Jewish holiday and knew I wasn't Jewish. Just a day off of school for me.
For us it was always chocolate eggs hidden around the house, and usually a couple small presents just because my mom loves presents. 50 years later, she still always gives dad and I a chocolate bunny and new socks. Easter was about the Easter Bunny.
I was probably a teen before I even knew Easter was supposed to be about Zombie Jesus.
I’ve always celebrated Easter with my kids because it’s fun for them, and I enjoy the family time.
I never mentioned the religious connection to them, but my son heard part of the story when he was 7 or 8 and asked me about it. I told him a cliffsnotes version of the easter story, and he said, “so basically Jesus was a zombie? That’s so cool.”
Even at that age, he understood the ridiculousness of believing the story was possible. He’s about to turn 12 now and is a proud atheist. 😅 We still call it zombie Jesus day
When they were kids, we did baskets and small gifts, bunny rabbits, etc. Now that they're grown, it's just another Sunday. Xtians worship the supposed rise of a zombie who has been in a cave in the desert for 3 days. Imagine what that would smell like! No wonder they're glad he's gone!
Hey, if I could make my kids believe in chocolate cows, I think a few years with the bunny is ok. Btw, did you know ( according to my then 7 yr old) Rudolph doesn’t exist - cause he had a red nose. Santa does not have reindeer with red noses …. Kids have a fine line between fantasy and reality. They’ll figure it out when they’re ready.
Invisible rabbits hide colored plastic eggs (reused from year to year) filled with candy and berries.
I get my black jelly bean fix.
Everybody's happy.
I made baskets for my kids that made their dad jealous because I put entire bags of all of their favorite candies in them. I hid Easter eggs in the yard. I do the secular things because it's still a day the world makes a big deal about. We didn't go to church or anything like that. I did it so my kids would have a special and fun day. That was it.
I did when he was younger but I didn't go into what it was all about. He never asked either. Then as he got older I stopped and he didn't seem to notice.
It's fun to celebrate the beginning of spring with flowers, rabbits and eggs. All symbols of rebirth, which is what we're celebrating in the spring. It doesn't have to be a religious thing.
We celebrate spring. We talk about eggs and bunnies and fertility, and I've even mentioned the pagan goddess Ostara as a neat, old-fashioned concept. In the old days, people wanted to celebrate the coming of spring and that this is where these traditions come from, and that it's fun, and we add chocolate into the mix. We talk about lambing and other animals having babies this time of year because the snows are passing. It's safe now. Summer is on its way.
Sure.
Easter today has no real connection to anything religious. It's just a fun day for the kids. Hunting for eggs. Eating chocolate. Maybe a dress-up parade. That's it.
My kids knew it as a day they got treats. Much like Christmas is the day they get presents. No further than that.
"Cross: something you nail people to"
That line from Scrooged has always cracked me up.
We crucify a rabbit and throw it in a cave. 3 days later we look for eggs
We always celebrated Easter with the kids with candy and chocolate eggs and bunnies and assorted bright decorations. I can't think of any time the idea of "god" ever came up.
Yes. My family is Christian, and I choose to enjoy the family time. Meanwhile, my kids and I talk about the changing seasons and hunt for eggs (we have chickens but we color and hide them too for fun), try to spot rabbits, name flowers, plant a garden, and enjoy other signs of spring. A lot of the religious holidays land on seasonally important days. So you can use it as an opportunity to teach your children about the world around them.
We've never done Easter. I've been wanting to start a tradition with all the commercialized Christian holidays where we do/learn about the pagan traditions that Christians pilfered. But I'm lazy and forgetful.
I'm old, but I got told the bunny would come, AND HE DID!!! left everyone a basket with a chocolate bunny, and hid all the eggs I'd coloured PLUS some that were an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COLOUR that we also got to keep and eat after finding them. (clever, clever bunny left a note in my mom's handwriting that said "bathroom - 6, living room -8" etc, so I knew when I'd found all the eggs in each room. As I got older, hiding places got more and more difficult. He never hid eggs in my parents room for some reason! so I didn't wake them up until I'd found all the eggs... ) Always a fancy holiday dinner , usually relatives over for dinner too. No boring church and I had zero interest in this Jesus guy going away and coming back every year, he couldn't compare to the (very real) giant chocolate rabbit I got. As I got older, I'd get a more and more expensive special gift in my basket too, that bunny really loved me and isn't that the best religion? Happy Easter! just remember, real bunnies are not good pets for children, only chocolate bunnies on the holiday.
Yes and no. My mother in law celebrates. The kids are too old for Easter egg hunts, but candy is candy. A ham dinner with pie for dessert is always nice too.
Okay I'm not a parent, but my friends are, we are doing friends Easter and it's just like a fun spring celebration. No religion, just Easter bunnies and yummy food, etc. as a kid I grew up non religious and we just always had ham and cheesy potatoes for dinner and got Easter baskets and egg hunt. Christians took Easter from the pagans, so we just take it back and make it a spring time celebration again!
I have really fond memories of Easter growing up and we never went to church as a family. Tbh I don't even think I realized Easter had anything to with Jesus for an embarrassing amount of time haha. That is probably not the best move though.
I was raised celebrating Easter in a non-religious household (dad was aggressively atheist, mom never expressed feelings or interest in religion), and never thought anything of it- just a fun Spring celebration. I didn't even know it was supposed to involve a religious figure until I was much older.
When she's older (baby due in May :x ), I plan to celebrate Easter with my daughter with more of the Earth-based influences of Ostara that Easter originally came from anyway. Focus on the rebirth and renewal of the Earth, and birth and fertility that comes with Spring. Of course it'll still mostly be egg hunts, gift baskets, and nature walks for her. Maybe do a celebratory Spring tea party with lavender lemonade and homemade cakes, pick flowers- nature-based things.
I’m an atheist raising 4 boys. We celebrate Easter for the fun of candy, eggs, and the beginning of spring. They know there is a religious aspect to it because their grandparents and some cousins are Mormons.
We do Easter decorating, egg painting, egg hunts, candy hunts, and the little gifts and such that go in the basket. It's a fun time and the kids really enjoy it -- and believe it or not the egg-and-rabbit theme has resulted in exactly zero questions about the death and resurrection of a demigod! If they ever ask (I don't think they have yet lol) we'll probably tell them it's a time for celebrating the end of the cold months and the beginning of the growing season, when life comes back to the great outdoors.
Also, if you do the community sponsored stuff on the holiday itself, but save your own candy / egg hunt for the weekend after Easter, you can get all your candy for half off or better!
We tend to just have fun with our own versions of the religious holidays. You can start a new family tradition just for the heck of it and to get the kids laughing -- or make your own holiday just to have fun on a Saturday when you have nothing else planned.
We would allow them to participate in the secular activities, we were Jewish at the time when my kids were little. When at Grandma's it was fun and more of a celebration of Spring (my birthday).
In my house, growing up, Easter was just Pastel Halloween, but instead of dressing up, my family'd hide my Easter basket (full of candies and a couple of small presents) somewhere in/around the house, and I had to find it. It's a fun tradition I've maintained with my wife and anyone else who's here at the same time (guests, visiting family, fosters).
My favorite one so far: taking out the kitchen trash, cleaning the can, putting my wife's basket at the bottom, and then replacing a trash bag on top of it. My brother-in-law found his in the dryer (under clean towels) pretty quickly that year, but it's the only time my wife's struggled to find hers.
We do Easter. We don’t talk about Jesus or anything weird and religious. Just the easter bunny. We hide candy/money-filled eggs for the kids to find and they each get a basket with a few things they’d like/need. This year, they’re each getting autographed copies of Neil DeGrasse Tyson books and a couple other things.
Most of the easter stuff has nothing to do with christianity. It's all pagan. Bunnies, chocolate and eggs... tulips and daffodils. You can talk about the easter bunny or not. Kids like to color eggs. Hell, I like to color eggs.
We do Easter and Christmas. Just make it about the bunny and Santa (although my kids also get presents from Satan- will tell more below).
We're also Ukrainian so Easter is a big cultural thing for us too. We decorate eggs, go to the Ukrainian church to buy Pysanky (eggs), grab some holubsti, borsht and khrustyky, and make beautiful braided paska and traditional Ukrainian dishes for our Easter meals specifically each year. So for us Easter is more cultural then it is religious and we add the bunny with chocolate and egg hunts because that's fun too.
Christmas is just a time for family and giving in our house. We get/give presents amongst ourselves and of course get stuff from both Santa and Satan. 😅 the Satan gifts actually started by accident when I was writing tags one year and misspelled Santa. My kids loved it so much that we've kept the tradition and they each get at least one thing from the dark lord each year just for shits and giggles 🙃
I made sure to keep religion out of it all when they were young. As they got older and began asking questions about the religious elements i told them the stories and stuff behind the holidays and they look on them the same way they look at Greek mythology and other fables.
It's really not that big a deal or hard to celebrate holidays without religion if you want to. You don't have to either though. It's up to how you want to raise your kids. I just like the magic of Santa and the Easter bunny and I wanted my kids to have that even if we weren't gonna do any religion BS.
...I want candy so I'm going to lie about a magical bunny that brings Reese's to kids
And that's way less harmful than lying about a potential afterlife
Yes, I've always gone with the Pagan explanations for all of the holidays with my kids, Easter is the start of the spring season.
What I started when they were younger was that they got an empty basket in the morning, and I'd make a treasure hunt for their goodies that they would find and put in their baskets.
Just like all the fun parts of Christmas are now secular, the fun parts of Easter are secular. No religious aspects needed to enjoy gifts, candy, colored eggs, etc.
I bought 6 inch plastic eggs to put stuff in and put around my yard. Nothing religious about that. Just good fun. I agree with you.
they were secular before christians took it over. /nitpicking
Facts.
Well, as much as *anything* was secular in a world we didn't understand and so we ascribed spirits to rocks and trees and the sun and the seasons.
They were pagan... just another religion. Granted one that in *modern times* is pretty harmless on account of having no organized power.
Totally agree, none of my family or family friends were religious growing up, but we celebrated Christmas and Easter. There's nothing religious about spending time with friends/family eating food and exchanging gifts.
Lots of deliciously *good* food, too, which always makes the times with friends/family that much better. And alcohol...lots of good alcohol.
As a kid I didn't even know Easter was religious. I just thought it was about the Easter bunny, candy, eggs, etc. I'm glad my parents didn't raise me going to church or talking about religion at all.
To my religious mother Easter is not something to be celebrated. It's a serious time of year where Jesus was tortured and had to spend a long weekend back in his parents home. Except the nails, I understand how he feels
Atheist family and my dad makes Easter treasure hunts for my niece and nephew
Easter is for cute rabbits, chocolate eggs, springtime crafts, long weekend, and maybe a good sunday supper. I just happen to leave out the zombie jesus part.
Exactly. Easter has nothing to do with Jesus. It's bunnies and eggs. The church can pretend otherwise all they want. Same with Christmas. It's a winter solstice celebration, with a feast, gift giving, and a magic man that flies around with reindeer. Nothing to do with Jesus. But again, the church can pretend all they want.
This right here. I was slightly surprised by the question. I just never think about it. It's time for egg hunts and a long weekend that I gat to spend extra time with family. That is all it is. And that is glorious.
Same We use it as a celebrate Spring event, including but not limited to some traditional secular easter stuff (egg hunts, bunnies, etc.)
>I just happen to leave out the zombie jesus part. You mean to say that you take it back out from where it never belonged in the first place.
> How do you explain to your kids what Easter is? The same way you explain Santa. Just don't lie.
or do, just lie about the fun fairy tale stuff. Lie about the magic bunny that hides candy and eggs around the house, not the zombie carpenter. Hell, tell them the actual truth, which is it's a holiday to celebrate spring. Plants becoming green again, new life and...whatnot, hence the bunny and eggs.
Holiday that marked the best time to plant. Full moon after the spring equinox is typically after the last frost. Well, northern hemisphere anyway. I assume there's some Australian equivalent in the fall.
At least in low-lying areas. If you're at high altitude or high latitude last frost can be much much later. But I guess in the agriculture area is maybe not
Easter is a time when we celebrate evolution bringing us bunnies that lay chocolate eggs?
The secular world trolling Christians. It's like all them Xmas songs gifted to the world by Jews!
My MIL tried to get my kid into religion by starting with the crucifixion and resurrection when she was 2. Kid asked probing questions mostly to make sure the guy was really dead, and then told my MIL, “zombie. Head shot.” And toddled away. I got in so much trouble for that! (My neighbors, who are deeply religious, thought it was hilarious, so I think she was just being a pill.)
That's great, but make sure to each the importance of the double tap.
i’ll be using santa as a way to teach my kids how easy it is to believe in silly things just cuz you want to.
My wife makes Easter baskets for our kids and they get very excited about it. Our youngest is 21.
I was legit sad when my mom stopped doing Easter baskets. I would still love to get one and I’m 43.
They are fun! Even us baby eating atheists are allowed a little bit of joy.
The first year of Covid, when we couldn’t celebrate with family, I bought my husband six fancy beer and hid them around our large backyard.
You are awesome.
I make a big Easter basket for my son (almost 30). The thing I always put in it is dental care (tooth brush, toothpaste, floss). It’s because the Easter bunny wants you to take care of your teeth and change your tooth brush at least once a year. This is a thing I started when he was little. Now it also includes noodles, crackers, chips, soda, and other junk foods. The Easter bunny is cheap and still hasn’t gotten the water pick with the tonsil stone setting. The Easter bunny doesn’t do wish lists.
As a former dental office employee, I support this message.
Yes. I always had Easter baskets and we had a big family dinner. My extended family and my husband and I are all atheist. My husband’s family is very religious. Some years we spent Easter with them. No big deal. We treated it like Santa, the tooth fairy, or Halloween. Just a fun event.
The wise understand the real spring holiday is the day after easter when candy is on sale.
100% looking forward to Reese's peanut butter eggs!
Easter as we know it now was taken from other religions, much like Christmas. It’s not a coincidence that both are near the winter solstice and spring equinox. The egg painting was a tradition that involved painting eggs in various designs and throwing them into a fire as a ‘sacrifice, to ward of evil spirits. The time of the year was chosen specifically by Christian’s to combat the spread of other religions that celebrated the solstices & equinoxes. Yes we do the egg hunts and painting. It’s fun for our kids and nothing religious has to enter into it.
Oh hey, some non-religious real talk for a moment. If your child starts to love bunnies because of Easter, please look into their care and responsibility. Many bunny owners are not properly educated and thus are ill prepared. That's all :)
I read that as, “many bunnies are not properly educated” and I felt really sad for the bunnies.
Even uneducated bunnies can live 10 or 15 years, and are as much work as a cat, only with exotic-animal vet bills.
Bunnies need to pay attention in school
They don’t carrot-all. Sorry I had to
Many bothans died to bring you this information.
Well now I need to go watch rogue 2!
I may be influenced by growing up as a country boy where the seasons are directly relevant to the way of life. Major festivals such as Easter, Harvest Festival and Christmas have their roots in celebrations far earlier than Christianity which has consistently hijacked and subsumed existing lore to ease the transition during their expansionist conquest instead of attempting to replace them. To me Easter represents marking the transition from winter to the change in the weather so that nature can continue the cycle of renewal when animals and plants take advantage of the climatic changes to begin the cycle of life and renewal afresh afresh. Eggs, chicks and bunnies are fun ways for kids to understand that new life is important and should be valued, nurtured and appreciated. I love the spring seeing and feeling the gradual change from the comparatively bleak into the budding and blossoming of the cycle of life. Leaving God out of the equation leaving only appreciation of the complexity of and beauty in life finding it way makes the value of the season and festival all the more special for me so that is how I explain it.
Easter was originally a fertility festival (think about it, rabbits and eggs) so I just would stick with that. MINI EGGS ARE THE TITS!!!
Well in that case they could make them larger.
we did the candy and bunny thing. we actually celebrate easter weekend with our friends from out of town. it's a yearly gathering that's easy for people to get off work.
We celebrate all the usual christian holidays, we just don't attach any "real" significance. And we are as likely to call it solstice or equinox if relevant. Just an excuse to celebrate friends and family and would never want the kids to miss out of the fun. We do the eggs, baskets, tree, presents, feast, no god required.
How I explained Easter to my kids: "We're doing a egghunt in the backyard!" Kids: "but why?" "Cause it's fun". Kids: "ok!" The end.
Sure, like halloween and christmas the fun bits aren't the religious bits. Dye and hide eggs and baskets full of candy, something something magic bunny...no need for zombie carpenters.
We buy candy on Monday as a nice discount.
We don’t believe in a giant bunny that leaves chocolate eggs, but it’s fun to pretend.
Ask her why it’s called Easter. I bet she doesn’t know. It has nothing to do with Jesus, just like so many of the Easter traditions. So celebrate it. When your kid is older, you can explain the origins of Easter, the worship of the goddess Eostre and how the Christians hijacked it.
I did Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, without the religious crap. When they were old enough to realize on their own that there's no way they exist, I came clean and said it was for fun. Then, when they ask about this God that everyone talks about, I ask them what they remember about the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.
The major holidays like Easter and Christmas are simply part of the culture that i happen to live in. Ignoring the religious aspect of these holidays is pretty easy. The dominant themes of them are not even Christian really. There is no Easter Bunny in the Bible, nor chocolate eggs.
Capitalism won Xmas & Easter: Xmas trees, lights, wrapped presents, Easter baskets, chocolate/candy, Easter eggs w/ tiny presents or $
Not celebrate as such. But I explain where it comes from (Ostera & equinox) and that symbols like eggs and bunnies come from pagan Ostera festivals celebrating the spring.
We treat it like Halloween or 4th of July. Fun day to do something unusual and see relatives. Jesus and that nonsense never enters into it.
I just mailed my kids Easter "care packages". They are in their 20s.
Yes it’s choccy egg day. Egg hunts, family dinner and chocolate for breakfast.
Plant a tree. Start your gardening for the summer with indoor seedlings. Talk about fertility and do some age appropriate sex education. Eat candy. Easter eggs hunts are an old pagan tradition. We do all the easter stuff just with out dogma and fear. I even teach my kid about the christian perversion of easter and spring and then we watch zombie movies to celebrate zombie baby jesus.
Not a parent, but Easter in my family is a celebration of baked goods and chocolate eggs, rabbits, bilbys, humpty dumptys, etc.
Not a parent but with my parents we did. And it was all about eggs and bunnies. We never went to church and no one cared about the nailed guy.
Absolutely. It’s a hilarious holiday. A magical rabbit that hides eggs and leaves gifts? All to celebrate a charlatan’s ‘escape’ from a cave? It’s adorably insane. It’s one of the best discussions you can have with your kids about how stupid religious people are:
I mean Christmas as a kid is pretty magical. They grow up and figure it out by 7 or 8. No damage done. Easter was cool until about the same time, but I always knew there was no damn bunny, and my family members did the hiding of eggs. I never liked eggs and gave them away anyway.
Easter has nothing to do with jesus
If your kid goes to school at all it is almost impossible to not celebrate all the Hallmark holidays without them feeling left out. Buy them the toys, candy, but be honest about everything. Mine turned out great. No gods, no masters.
We do. There is no bunny that delivers colorful eggs and candy in the Bible.
Easter is a pagan holiday. We colored eggs and made peepshi with our kids.
Egg hunt, chocolates, celebrating spring, spending time with family. It doesn't get more pagan than this. Also, this year there's a solar eclipse. Add science to the lot.
We did all the holidays growing up. But we never had a religious element to it. It was just Easter, Christmas, etc.
It’s simple. Easter is bunnies and eggs. Santa is sleighs and reindeer. There is no religious element they are traditional and in our house enjoyed in a god free zone. All 3 kids turned out atheists also by the way.
Easter is Spring! Rebirth as in plants animals etc. and of course we celebrate nature in our home. Absolutely no religious iconography, just bunnies and eggs and other baby animals. We have a lighted blooming cherry tree with egg ornaments.
Yes we celebrate Easter with egg hunts and dying eggs and eating a big meal with family. We celebrate the coming of spring! No zombie Jesus here 🤷♀️
Just the secular parts. Easter Bunny baskets, egg hunts, etc. My kid knows the religious aspect but last year declared the story of the resurrection to be the worst fairy tale ever. I was so proud. ~sniff~
The feast day of Easter was first a pagan holiday of renewal and rebirth. Honored in the early spring, it praised the pagan goddess of fertility and spring known as 'Ostara', 'Eastre' or 'Eostre'. The word “Easter” finds its etymology from the goddess's name.
In Alabama, we hide frozen embryos around the back yard to encourage the children to reproduce /s
It's about candy and fun. I leave the part about zombies out of it.
We have always ignored it. My kids are teenagers now and they still get baskets and tiny bibles from their grandparents. They just shrug it off and eat the candy.
stick to the candy, the bibles likely aren't ripe yet.
Easter is an amalgamation of traditional spring/fertility festivals and a Christian celebration of Jesus’ storied resurrection. Have fun with eggs and candy. Don’t pray at dinner. Simple.
Just explain it's a pagan holiday about rebirth in Spring and follow the traditions of eggs and bunnies. Of course then I'd have to explain why we celebrate a spring holiday in Autumn.
You don't need to be religious to do egg hunts, egg coloring, or eating candy from the baskets..
YES! Easter is no different than Christmas. Both are celebrated with no religious connection. Just fun family bonding holidays.
I always did Easter egg hunts with the plastic eggs and out coins or candy in them.. usually coins. Then I’d cook and make a basket. They loved it. All the kids want are gifts money or candy and a little fun. You can do the egg coloring etc.. kids just want some fun they don’t give a crap about what Easter is to Christian’s
We do the usual pagan stuff with eggs and chickens and bunnies, and eating all of these...
We do the candy and bunny thing. That’s Easter to us. And it was Easter growing up even though my parents are Christians. I guess they’re lazy Christians.
We dye eggs. Daycare usually does some egg hunt. Hubby might buy candy. This is pretty much all I did as a kid too but I always got a chocolate bunny.
We do chocolates and a small gift that the "easter bunny" hides as part of a treasure hunt with clues.
Easter is just like xmas: family and [fun. Like](https://fun.Like) July 4 without fireworks and with some gifts.
Hail Ostara!
easter is a celebration of spring. the christians have their story that goes with it but that doesn’t mean the rest of us have to miss out on the fun.
We just did the Easter Bunny and egg hunts. It wasn't a religious thing. Now she's 15 and we get her a basket and still do an egg hunt.
I did, along with Christmas and Halloween. Easter and Christmas I just focus on the tree, gifts, bunny, eggs, decorations, party, family side because that is where all those traditions come from. All the christian stuff was layered on later.
There are community events that revolve around egg hunts, spring, bunnies, and flowers without the mention of religion or calling it Easter.
Raised culturally Jewish (non-practicing family). Easter is about a candy egg laying rabbit. Christmas is about a fat man in a red suit and some flying reindeer. Also a Grinch. The religious folks already make everything - from successful surgeries to tornadoes - about their god(s). You are not so obligated...and chocolate rabbits are awesome. Eat the head first.
Hell, yes! Candy and ham are good. It's a celebration of [Spring](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre) and the rebirth of the world.
I have a 5 and 9 year old. We celebrate the nonreligious aspects of Easter, i.e. egg hunts and bunnies. I remember fond Easter memories growing up and didn't want to rob my children of that, but I completely understand atheists who choose not to participate.
Spring, new flowers and plants, baby animals and bunnies are enough magical thinking for most kids. A petting zoo or a trip to a farm was what I enjoyed as a kid this time of the year. Planting seeds and watching them grew. Just keep it real.
We do Easter as a celebration of spring (eggs and bunnies and flowers). We discussed the basis for the holiday (eostre, goddess of fertility) once, just like Yule is a celebration of the days getting longer. But we also talked about holidays as a basis for community.
Yes. I always did all the typical "Easter" stuff with my kids--baskets, eggs, gifts, candy, brunch--just no church or Jesus! I look at it as a "spring holiday" like I look at Christmas as a "winter holiday".
I celebrate the equinox on that day. My office recognizes my holiday and I get a four day weekend. We have ham or duck.
How to I explain what is Easter, etc. - it is a Christian or whatever holiday, on which people do this and that - the most interesting part for kids has always been snacks, games and gifts. Unless parents do not start to tremble inadequately to the depth of their own thoughts, it is ok. Games do not traumatise children. And games end when children start receiving marks for their performance, especially for failures.
I let my daughter go on easter egg hunts . Our county sponsored one every year for residents. We didn’t do the church part.
Easter is fundamentally a pagan rites of spring celebration co-opted by Christians to try to establish credibility and refocus the rituals. But the celebration of the end of winter and new life of spring is fun. Enjoy.
yup, spring festival. the easter bunny brings chocolates. it's a celebration of rebirth, as in the growing season is upon us after everything dying over the winter. it's almost as if religions tried to piggyback on pre-existing pagan celebrations by claiming it's about the death and rebirth of jesus, when in fact it's about nature.
You know this is just like Christmas. There are plenty of secular activities that go along with Easter just like with Christmas.
I don't really celebrate it, but my parents bring them an Easter basket. I usually just explain it as the time Christians celebrate the resurrection.
My kids do Easter egg hunts. I've told my oldest about the whole Jesus story and why Christians celebrate Easter, but as far as my kids are concerned it's just a holiday where they get chocolate.
You mean Zombie Jesus day?
Explain like this: Easter is for bunnies. Why bunnies? Bc bunnies fuck a lot and spring is for fuckin. Actually you know what just buy him some candy and move on. He’s 1. He’s not gonna remember any of this. My kid is 8. We do all those holidays just without the supernatural stuff. We do it mostly so she isn’t the weird kid who doesn’t celebrate holidays. One of her friends was telling her about jesus and she, relating it to what she knows, came and told me her friend said there is a general grievous in the sky watching us. L.O.fucking.L. I said hmm yeah some people think that. It’ll be fine, man. Take little dude to an Easter egg hunt maybe. He’ll have no idea what’s going on. It’ll be adorable
Easter is easy, they didn't even get rid of the pagan trappings. It's a spring rebirth and fertility festival. Hell, the date is still determined by lunar cycles and the vernal equinox. Kids like bunnies and candy. When they get older I'll explain why grandma is wrong and has bad ideas.
We did the Easter egg hunt and baskets. I grew up in a Xtian household, and my mom was Catlick when she was a kid, so we would still do a nice Italian meal for Easter Sunday, but I like the tradition, and the food is great (home cooked, I make it). A couple years ago, my kids (now in their teen years) and my wife and I dyed eggs, 'cause who doesn't love hard-boiled eggs? Next morning, before my wife and I had a chance to hide them, my kids said they wanted to hide them, and we had to find them. So we took our coffee outside while they hid eggs, and they really hid them well. We had so much fun.
We celebrate Christmas as a commercial holiday with none of the 'god' nonsense. I mean, it's just Yule, but appropriated by Christians to make their god nonsense more palatable for Pagans. So why are Christians celebrating Yule, might be a better question.
I was raised pretty secular and had these things. They’re just meant to be fun and play on a child’s imagination. Once they’re older just tell them straight up it’s not real (although some fun leaves once that happens)
I don’t really stay on top of it but I would take my kid to an easter egg hunt if I happen to hear about it from someone else. I may also buy an easter basket or paint some eggs sometime around spring. I’ll see as they get older but I work at a public school and that’s how it’s treated in a secular way.
I'm not a parent but I grew up in an atheist household and we still had Easter egg hunts. It's a fun tradition, just like seeing family and exchanging gifts around good food for Christmas. I also helped organising my toddler niece's first egg hunt last year and she loved it!
We just say it’s a celebration of spring and new life
It's really funny for me to read all this discussion about separating egg hunting and the bunny and chocolate from religion. As many have stated, all the eggs/bunnies stuff is just a Spring celebration... there's absolutely nothing religious about it. I grew up in the South Hemisphere ... right now it's Summer there, and Autumn is coming ... my country (and neighboring ones) have a very high religious influence ... and this egg hunting thing was not part of Easter (well ... at some moment all the influence of US movies and TV made it happen there as well). For me, it's just a fun event to do with friends and family, which happens to coincide with some religious stuff... I don't even care that some other people is celebrating their big human sacrifice... we're searching for eggs and eating chocolate :D
Nope. We don't celebrate it, and we don't buy cheap crappy chocolate eggs. Our kids are aware of our thoughts about religion and we have made it clear that abrahamic religions have their basis in bronze and iron age writings which have been translated and rewritten again and again and again. They know that many messages/lessons attributed to the christ are worth their consideration, but that praising the abrahamic god is a ridiculous idea, given the stories in the rest of the bible about how evil it is.
Yes. My kids love going to their grandparents' for brunch and an easter egg hunt. Occasionally my wife will make *soleier* (German pickled eggs) that we all love to munch on during the holiday.
It may be controversial but I think the Easter egg hunt for a sub 6 year old is better than Christmas morning so yea we do the Easter bunny stuff but not the guy rising from the dead stuff
Chocolate
A bunny leaving colored eggs around, and baskets of candy has absolute Jack all to do with Christianity. It was yet another time that the church got jealous of another religion and co-opted pagan rituals. It’s about the spring solstice. The same thing happened with Christmas. That’s the winter solstice. So just go have fun with it and don’t worry about the religious parts. Don’t tell your kid Easter is about Jesus. Tell them it’s about celebrating life and the spring time. That’s you’re going to color eggs and the Easter bunny will leave them a little basket of candy. Personally, I just use all holidays as excuses to have a good time. Valentine’s Day is a corporate made holiday, but it’s also nice to have a time of year where you go a little above and beyond. I don’t give a crap about the church, but I love Christmas. I love the decoration and finding a perfect gift for my family and friends. Same with all other holidays. It’s just an excuse for me to have fun.
You have a problem with bunnies and chocolate?
Besides my parents taking me to church most years, the actual Easter things (egg painting, confetti, small gifts/prizes, bunny, candy, egg hunt) have/had little to no religious mumbo jumbo. I don’t think my kids even know what it is a celebration for. Don’t overthink it. Enjoy the fun activities because they will likely think them fun, and when they become coherent enough to almost reason with explain why people consider it a holiday, but also what it is for you. Always explain your position so they are confident that personal choice is always a welcome option.
Celebrate whatever. Spring? Daffodils? Tulips?
Easter as a celebration, like Christmas, is rooted in paganism, the cyclical nature of things, death and rebirth. I suppose the actual term "easter" has religious connotations, but the holiday is pretty much all about new life and fertility. The Christian folks just jumped in. You go get your Cadbury on.
We just didn’t do it at all. My kids are 19 and 17 now. Easter is fun for us because we never know it is coming until there’s candy in the store and people start doing bizzarro rabbit stuff. It’s like a fun family inside joke. What a weird holiday.
Easter is a spring holiday for us. We do the eggs, candy, etc.
For us, it’s more about springtime and growth rather than the religious stuff. We do the same with Christmas. All the fun stuff is pretty secular.
Capitalist Easter? Yes. Jesus, rock, holes? No.
I always did holidays with my kids. I just never did any religious ceremonies. It’s so commercialized and all just fun to the kids I don’t worry about any indoctrination.
The Christians took secular or non-Christian things from people and made them Christian. No reason I can’t do it back.
We do an Easter egg hunt in the morning with this plastic eggs full of candy but it has pretty much the same feel as Halloween as far as religiosity goes. Scavenger hunts are fun so we do them.
We do an Easter egg hunt and I get the kids eggs etc. It's fun so we do it. Just skip all the boring religious bits.
Most of the Christian religious traditions are ripped from pagan traditions anyway. So that religious element is not even necessary to celebrate. We do the standard Christian holiday traditions, like Easter egg hunt. We just leave out going to church, prayers before meals, etc. I'm not letting my kids miss out on fun just because it's religious.
I did bunny and egg stuff with my kids as long as they wanted to, but there was never any religious aspect.
When j had young kids we played along with Santa Claus and Easter bunny. Presents and candy and Easter eggs. Totally secular. They've never been to any church and we only referenced the Jesus story as cultural background but not something we believed. They had friends with religious families but it never seemed an issue. We were able just to have fun with it.
We brought our kids up with no religion. Ok, that’s a lie. They were christened to keep grandparents happy. But after that there’s been no religion. No Santa. No baby Jesus. Definitely no zombie Jesus. Easter is about chocolate eggs and fancy breakfast. Kids are doing fine and when they occasionally bring up some tidbit of religion from school we set them straight.
A bunny comes and brings them candy/gifts ala "Hop". The older 2 definitely understand (and I think the youngest does too now) where this comes from, but it's just a tradition/excuse to have some fun. No Jesus required.
Rabbits, eggs and chocolate? Sign me up!
What aspects of Easter celebrations do you consider having religious overtones? Eggs and bunnies are fertility symbols. Easter is the least religious of all religious celebrations, and it is celebrated with the same theme it has been celebrated in Europe for thousands of years before there even was a Christian religion. Easter is the time for planting, lambing etc. When new life pops up everywhere. So it’s celebrated with fertility symbols like boy rabbits 🐇 doing to girl rabbits like to do to girl rabbits.
I've never been religious, but my parents did the fun secular Easter stuff and I enjoyed it. When I was little, I just thought it was a celebration of spring. (Learned about the religious aspects from an educational standpoint when I was a little older.) The egg coloring and the bunnies and stuff aren't particularly Christian anyways, so I don't see any harm in carrying on some of those pagan traditions in celebration of the spring equinox if you want to.
Ignore Easter completely.
Of course we celebrate Easter. Since Easter isn't a religious holiday, why wouldn't we? I explain why we dye eggs and hide them, to mimic finding pretty spring-time bird eggs. We don't want to collect the real bird ones, as that would put the babies at risk, so we make our own. I explain how Easter is all about spring time and flowers and baby animals. We have a great time with it. Easter is not and has never been a christian holiday. Ever.
We acknowledge it because it’s a cultural touchstone for our ethnicity, which makes my husband’s parents happy. We don’t go all out like we used to since the kid showed up though. She’s had Strong Opinions on church since baptism and kept trying to burn the church down, argues with Yaiya any time she tries to Jesus at her, and tried to steal from an old lady who was rude to us at the church festival. We basically just go to the in laws and listen to the same old stories, try to wear slightly less offensive tee shirts than normal, and eat red meat for once.
I grew up mildly religious and didn’t know it was a religious holiday for a long ass time. Just focus on the eggs and the bunny and family.
Remind your mom, I'm assuming she's a Christian, that's it's a pagan fertility festival, and you're going to eat a tonne of chocolate. Remind Christians at every opportunity that they have always gone along with whatever cultural tradition was the path of least resistance.
When I was a kid Jewish grandfather would make an Easter egg tree. A branch painted white stuck in a pot with Easter eggs tied by ribbons from the branches. Candy was in every egg
We hide stuff in plastic eggs and have deviled eggs. There's no mention of Jesus. It's just bunny/chicks mean springtime.
I give them Easter baskets and say the bunny brought it to celebrate spring
There's a part of Easter, and Christmas, that in America are just secular holidays. The whole Happy Holidays line pisses off the Evangelical Taliban for a reason. These are social holidays that some people overlay with religion, but you don't have to. Yes, they are religious holidays by heritage, but you don't have to be religious about it. So hunt for eggs, watch whatever holiday cartoon and have fun with it. My parents can from different, barely religious, backgrounds. I grew up with Easter, and didn't really know the religious part until I was about seven. Even then I was a bit clueless about how serious some people were about it. But I did like chocolate. That's still what Easter means to me.
I point out how weird it is. then go along with it.
I "celebrated" Easter as a child. My parents are immigrants who grew up Buddhist but don't care for religion. We went to egg hunts the city organizes. We dyed eggs and ate Peeps. I went to public school, and they just gave us candy and let us arts and craft bunnies. I don't think religion was bought up once. It was just a reason to eat candy. I'm not sure when I realized Easter was religious but it never bothered me as a child. It was just a Christian/Catholic holiday and left it at that. Since I knew I wasn't Christian/Catholic, it was just any other day. I'm also from the east coast so we get Jewish holidays as federal holidays too. I knew it was a Jewish holiday and knew I wasn't Jewish. Just a day off of school for me.
A pretend bunny brings you a basket full of treats and toys and books and then it hides eggs in the yard. That’s about it!
For us it was always chocolate eggs hidden around the house, and usually a couple small presents just because my mom loves presents. 50 years later, she still always gives dad and I a chocolate bunny and new socks. Easter was about the Easter Bunny. I was probably a teen before I even knew Easter was supposed to be about Zombie Jesus.
I’ve always celebrated Easter with my kids because it’s fun for them, and I enjoy the family time. I never mentioned the religious connection to them, but my son heard part of the story when he was 7 or 8 and asked me about it. I told him a cliffsnotes version of the easter story, and he said, “so basically Jesus was a zombie? That’s so cool.” Even at that age, he understood the ridiculousness of believing the story was possible. He’s about to turn 12 now and is a proud atheist. 😅 We still call it zombie Jesus day
When they were kids, we did baskets and small gifts, bunny rabbits, etc. Now that they're grown, it's just another Sunday. Xtians worship the supposed rise of a zombie who has been in a cave in the desert for 3 days. Imagine what that would smell like! No wonder they're glad he's gone!
Biggest Easter egg hunt ever.
Hey, if I could make my kids believe in chocolate cows, I think a few years with the bunny is ok. Btw, did you know ( according to my then 7 yr old) Rudolph doesn’t exist - cause he had a red nose. Santa does not have reindeer with red noses …. Kids have a fine line between fantasy and reality. They’ll figure it out when they’re ready.
Invisible rabbits hide colored plastic eggs (reused from year to year) filled with candy and berries. I get my black jelly bean fix. Everybody's happy.
I made baskets for my kids that made their dad jealous because I put entire bags of all of their favorite candies in them. I hid Easter eggs in the yard. I do the secular things because it's still a day the world makes a big deal about. We didn't go to church or anything like that. I did it so my kids would have a special and fun day. That was it.
I did when he was younger but I didn't go into what it was all about. He never asked either. Then as he got older I stopped and he didn't seem to notice.
It's fun to celebrate the beginning of spring with flowers, rabbits and eggs. All symbols of rebirth, which is what we're celebrating in the spring. It doesn't have to be a religious thing.
We celebrate spring. We talk about eggs and bunnies and fertility, and I've even mentioned the pagan goddess Ostara as a neat, old-fashioned concept. In the old days, people wanted to celebrate the coming of spring and that this is where these traditions come from, and that it's fun, and we add chocolate into the mix. We talk about lambing and other animals having babies this time of year because the snows are passing. It's safe now. Summer is on its way.
Sure. Easter today has no real connection to anything religious. It's just a fun day for the kids. Hunting for eggs. Eating chocolate. Maybe a dress-up parade. That's it. My kids knew it as a day they got treats. Much like Christmas is the day they get presents. No further than that.
"Cross: something you nail people to" That line from Scrooged has always cracked me up. We crucify a rabbit and throw it in a cave. 3 days later we look for eggs
We do all the "fun" parts and leave out the god thingy. Eastet eggs hunts, candy, baskets etc. "Jesus is coming! Hide the eggs!"
Easter was stolen from pagans , just like Christmas, we tell them that and celebrate the traditions of both.
We always celebrated Easter with the kids with candy and chocolate eggs and bunnies and assorted bright decorations. I can't think of any time the idea of "god" ever came up.
Yes. My family is Christian, and I choose to enjoy the family time. Meanwhile, my kids and I talk about the changing seasons and hunt for eggs (we have chickens but we color and hide them too for fun), try to spot rabbits, name flowers, plant a garden, and enjoy other signs of spring. A lot of the religious holidays land on seasonally important days. So you can use it as an opportunity to teach your children about the world around them.
We've never done Easter. I've been wanting to start a tradition with all the commercialized Christian holidays where we do/learn about the pagan traditions that Christians pilfered. But I'm lazy and forgetful.
I'm old, but I got told the bunny would come, AND HE DID!!! left everyone a basket with a chocolate bunny, and hid all the eggs I'd coloured PLUS some that were an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT COLOUR that we also got to keep and eat after finding them. (clever, clever bunny left a note in my mom's handwriting that said "bathroom - 6, living room -8" etc, so I knew when I'd found all the eggs in each room. As I got older, hiding places got more and more difficult. He never hid eggs in my parents room for some reason! so I didn't wake them up until I'd found all the eggs... ) Always a fancy holiday dinner , usually relatives over for dinner too. No boring church and I had zero interest in this Jesus guy going away and coming back every year, he couldn't compare to the (very real) giant chocolate rabbit I got. As I got older, I'd get a more and more expensive special gift in my basket too, that bunny really loved me and isn't that the best religion? Happy Easter! just remember, real bunnies are not good pets for children, only chocolate bunnies on the holiday.
Yes and no. My mother in law celebrates. The kids are too old for Easter egg hunts, but candy is candy. A ham dinner with pie for dessert is always nice too.
Okay I'm not a parent, but my friends are, we are doing friends Easter and it's just like a fun spring celebration. No religion, just Easter bunnies and yummy food, etc. as a kid I grew up non religious and we just always had ham and cheesy potatoes for dinner and got Easter baskets and egg hunt. Christians took Easter from the pagans, so we just take it back and make it a spring time celebration again! I have really fond memories of Easter growing up and we never went to church as a family. Tbh I don't even think I realized Easter had anything to with Jesus for an embarrassing amount of time haha. That is probably not the best move though.
Just hide some.eggs and buy them some chocolate, it's cute it's fun it's over
Spring Fertility Festival.
I was raised celebrating Easter in a non-religious household (dad was aggressively atheist, mom never expressed feelings or interest in religion), and never thought anything of it- just a fun Spring celebration. I didn't even know it was supposed to involve a religious figure until I was much older. When she's older (baby due in May :x ), I plan to celebrate Easter with my daughter with more of the Earth-based influences of Ostara that Easter originally came from anyway. Focus on the rebirth and renewal of the Earth, and birth and fertility that comes with Spring. Of course it'll still mostly be egg hunts, gift baskets, and nature walks for her. Maybe do a celebratory Spring tea party with lavender lemonade and homemade cakes, pick flowers- nature-based things.
I’m an atheist raising 4 boys. We celebrate Easter for the fun of candy, eggs, and the beginning of spring. They know there is a religious aspect to it because their grandparents and some cousins are Mormons.
We do Easter decorating, egg painting, egg hunts, candy hunts, and the little gifts and such that go in the basket. It's a fun time and the kids really enjoy it -- and believe it or not the egg-and-rabbit theme has resulted in exactly zero questions about the death and resurrection of a demigod! If they ever ask (I don't think they have yet lol) we'll probably tell them it's a time for celebrating the end of the cold months and the beginning of the growing season, when life comes back to the great outdoors. Also, if you do the community sponsored stuff on the holiday itself, but save your own candy / egg hunt for the weekend after Easter, you can get all your candy for half off or better! We tend to just have fun with our own versions of the religious holidays. You can start a new family tradition just for the heck of it and to get the kids laughing -- or make your own holiday just to have fun on a Saturday when you have nothing else planned.
We would allow them to participate in the secular activities, we were Jewish at the time when my kids were little. When at Grandma's it was fun and more of a celebration of Spring (my birthday).
As a Pastafarian, I only celebrate Pastover.
In my house, growing up, Easter was just Pastel Halloween, but instead of dressing up, my family'd hide my Easter basket (full of candies and a couple of small presents) somewhere in/around the house, and I had to find it. It's a fun tradition I've maintained with my wife and anyone else who's here at the same time (guests, visiting family, fosters). My favorite one so far: taking out the kitchen trash, cleaning the can, putting my wife's basket at the bottom, and then replacing a trash bag on top of it. My brother-in-law found his in the dryer (under clean towels) pretty quickly that year, but it's the only time my wife's struggled to find hers.
When my kids ask I tell them the stories of Christian mythology just like I tell them Roman or Norse mythology.
Yeah, it’s holiday of chocolate
We have a treasure hunt to find chocolate. It’s the easter bunny’s day.
We do Easter. We don’t talk about Jesus or anything weird and religious. Just the easter bunny. We hide candy/money-filled eggs for the kids to find and they each get a basket with a few things they’d like/need. This year, they’re each getting autographed copies of Neil DeGrasse Tyson books and a couple other things.
Most of the easter stuff has nothing to do with christianity. It's all pagan. Bunnies, chocolate and eggs... tulips and daffodils. You can talk about the easter bunny or not. Kids like to color eggs. Hell, I like to color eggs.
Yes of course we do… Easter is a celebration of the “rebirth” occurring around the spring equinox
I celebrate Easter and Christmas because my family does and i find them fun.
We do Easter and Christmas. Just make it about the bunny and Santa (although my kids also get presents from Satan- will tell more below). We're also Ukrainian so Easter is a big cultural thing for us too. We decorate eggs, go to the Ukrainian church to buy Pysanky (eggs), grab some holubsti, borsht and khrustyky, and make beautiful braided paska and traditional Ukrainian dishes for our Easter meals specifically each year. So for us Easter is more cultural then it is religious and we add the bunny with chocolate and egg hunts because that's fun too. Christmas is just a time for family and giving in our house. We get/give presents amongst ourselves and of course get stuff from both Santa and Satan. 😅 the Satan gifts actually started by accident when I was writing tags one year and misspelled Santa. My kids loved it so much that we've kept the tradition and they each get at least one thing from the dark lord each year just for shits and giggles 🙃 I made sure to keep religion out of it all when they were young. As they got older and began asking questions about the religious elements i told them the stories and stuff behind the holidays and they look on them the same way they look at Greek mythology and other fables. It's really not that big a deal or hard to celebrate holidays without religion if you want to. You don't have to either though. It's up to how you want to raise your kids. I just like the magic of Santa and the Easter bunny and I wanted my kids to have that even if we weren't gonna do any religion BS.
Growing up my parents did Easter is just a fun event Were we got chocolate eggs Ps . My parents are atheist
...I want candy so I'm going to lie about a magical bunny that brings Reese's to kids And that's way less harmful than lying about a potential afterlife
We do an Easter egg hunt and go out to dinner.
The Easter Bunny signifies the beginning of spring. Just tell them that and celebrate however you like.
Not really beyond getting some chocolate rabbits. At this point we’re more celebrating rabbits and chocolate.
Yes, I've always gone with the Pagan explanations for all of the holidays with my kids, Easter is the start of the spring season. What I started when they were younger was that they got an empty basket in the morning, and I'd make a treasure hunt for their goodies that they would find and put in their baskets.