The big Easter egg hunt

We didn't have Easter egg hunts in my childhood. It wasn't an English thing. There was no Easter bunny. We did have Easter eggs and hot cross buns but no Easter bunny. I have no idea whether this is still the same in England - maybe not - but certainly when we arrived in Australia we were introduced to the concept of the Easter bunny. I have looked it up and it seems that the Easter bunny - or hare originally - originated in Germany back in the seventeenth century. Maybe the German immigrants brought it here, or maybe it has come via America, like halloween. Anyway these days it is obviously a huge commercial enterprise, and we all succumb to it. Because it's sort of cute. And certainly our grandchildren get a lot of fun out of it.

Today for example began two or three, maybe more, days ago with emails to the Easter bunny, courtesy of my husband who throws himself into all of this. There was a bit of drama this year because one of the grandchildren dared to suggest that the Easter bunny was a bit fat, which upset him (the Easter bunny that is). Then we heard that the Easter bunny himself was too busy to come this year and had sent his third son Alfred instead. He left a map of where he had left the eggs. And the eggs must have been hidden well because they were not all found at once. Throughout the day new eggs were discovered and put into a bag for the poor people - for after the hunt the eggs were all sorted and shared out equally - almost as much fun as finding them in the first place.

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It was all rather lovely and we all ended up with rather too much chocolate, but if we are good we shall be able to stretch it out over a long period! Maybe.

Our Easter eggs were not as lovely as those shown here - they were just little chocolate eggs in brightly coloured foil. But as we all know around the world they do lots of wonderful and distinctive decorations.

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And then to top them all are the Fabergé eggs - exquisitely crafted, over the top jewelled eggs made for the Tsar of Russia. I think there are just around 60 and they cost an absolute fortune.

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But this is all an aside really. Today was about family and having fun, and sharing. And I was really proud of the way our beautiful little grandchildren shared their finds with each other and even the poor people. We will try to find somewhere we can deliver the poor people's eggs to, because it really does not seem fair that we should be lucky enough to have a lot of chocolate - which we all know is not good for us anyway. Then there's the little fibs about the Easter bunny as well. But I think they will forgive us one day.

Easter, to me, demonstrates how the Christian Easter is a northern hemisphere thing. It's Autumn here and spring bunnies and rebirth does not sit well with cooling days and some trees shedding all their leaves. It is not a season of rebirth and regeneration. And anyway it was all based around those pagan festivals that celebrate spring. So really a bit odd down here in Australia. We do enjoy it though.

Happy Easter.