Everyone enjoys celebrating Easter because it is a sign that spring is coming after a long, cold winter!

Everywhere you go around Easter time you can see Easter decorations: pictures of bunnies, eggs, baby ducks, chicks, and lots of pastel colours!

What do you do on Easter?
While children are asleep, the Easter Bunny visits their house with his basket of eggs and hides chocolates all over the house! When they wake up in the morning on Easter Sunday, the first thing they do is search all over the house for the hidden chocolate eggs! The eggs can also be plastic eggs with candies or other treats inside of them.

Good Friday and Easter Sunday are both official public holidays. For many people, Easter, like Christmas and Thanksgiving, is a day to spend with family. Every year I have dinner with my family, and my aunt and cousins join us for a big family celebration. Normally we eat ham with a few different vegetables (potatoes, squash, carrots), and for dessert – chocolate, of course!

What is Easter?
In Christianity, Easter is one of the most important days of the year. Easter Sunday celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ – the day Jesus came back to life. In many Catholic countries, Easter is a more important celebration than Christmas.

Jesus had returned to Jerusalem to observe the Jewish celebration of Passover. He ate the Passover meal with his disciples at what is now known as the Last Supper. He was later arrested, tried and convicted, and then finally sentenced to death. On Good Friday (before Easter Sunday), Christians remember the crucifixion of Jesus.

Easter is a ‘moveable feast,’ meaning the date changes. It’s not a fixed date like Christmas (which is always on December 25th). It was decided in 325 A.D. (Anno Domini = ‘in the year of our Lord’) that Easter Sunday would be on the 1st Sunday after the first full moon of spring.

It is only in English and German that this day is called ‘Easter.’ England adopted the name used for an old spring festival in Germany called ‘Eostre.’ In most other languages in Christian countries, (like French, Italian, and Spanish), the word for this day comes from the original Greek word ‘Pascha’ used for the Jewish Passover.

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