When thinking about the holiday Easter the first thing I picture is a giant bunny hiding eggs for children to find. Easter is a Christian holiday that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death, also marking the end of Lent. Though not all families that celebrate Easter are religious, some families enjoy the events that come with Easter like the egg hunts, festivals, and feasts. Seemingly one common way to celebrate Easter is through family gathering.

These are some ways our Buchtelite staff celebrate Easter.

Amore Hill, Contributor

When I was younger, I used to be more religious, which meant that every Easter was spent in church. I distinctly remember listening to sermons in a big, ruffled dress and buckled shoes. Likewise, I took part in dyeing and intricately decorating eggs. Though as I’ve grown up and gradually moved away from religion I’ve participated less in the holiday. Usually, my grandma makes Easter baskets for us for the holiday. Other than that, my family now forgoes the Easter holiday.

Layout Editor Olivia Richardson

My family is not very religious, so celebrating Easter has always been more of a fun thing we do as a family than for a religious reason. When I was little, we would always participate in the Easter Bunny tradition, where eggs filled with candy would be hidden around the house and my mom would then make a big Easter basket and hide that as well. I usually insisted on hiding all of the eggs again and having my parents look for them too.

We would also often go to my grandma’s house to be with her and go out to eat. Since both of my grandmas passed though, I usually just spend the day with my parents, and we just hang out around the house.

These are my family’s traditions. It’s a nice day to be together with my parents and other family, even if we are not necessarily celebrating the religious aspect of the holiday.

When I was pretty young, I remember hunting for eggs around my grandma’s backyard with my cousins. Then, we re-hid all of the eggs and made our parents and grandma look for all of them. I don’t see my cousins super often, so that is a nice memory of us all being together.

Alyssa Alexsonshk, Photographer and Contributor

One cool tradition I grew up with comes from Slavic culture. It’s a special way of easter egg decorating where you use melted wax to create designs on eggs then layer the colors and peel the wax after. The eggs are often intricately decorated. I don’t know if there is a deeper meaning or if it’s just a cool way to decorate easter eggs.

Shananne Lewis, Online Editor

My family growing up was my mom, my younger brother, and myself. Our big tradition was to go to church.  When I was growing up, we shopped for new clothing for Easter every year, so I had a new dress, shoes, purse, usually white hose, and an Easter hat (bonnet). I think I even had an Easter hat in my Senior year of high school, which was 1990. We always looked especially nice for Easter church morning, at the Waynesville United Methodist Church.

My mother always took us to get our picture with the Easter bunny prior to Easter. Many times, I was smiling, happy as can be, and my younger brother was bawling. He did not care for him as much as I did. My single mother had the best Easter baskets for us. She really overdid it. We had huge Easter baskets with tons of great candy. I remember the candy would last forever. And then we were given a big present that we mutually shared. Like one of those big balls from Wal-Mart. I think one year we got a bike we both shared. We always dyed eggs with my mom. I never ate them. I do not like hard-boiled eggs. But we had fun dying them. Then we would have an outdoor egg hunt with plastic eggs, and I think jellybeans were typically inside. The dyed eggs my mom would just eat, we did not hide those.

For my own family with two kids who are now a freshman and a junior at college, we start the Easter day with going to church. Sometimes they have new clothing, sometimes not. Women rarely wear hose anymore, and I tend to buy a new dress only every five years for Easter. But on Easter I tend to pull out the panty hose. I just rotate a bunch of my older dresses. I think I want a new dress this year though. And when my kids were little, I too, took them to get their photos with the Easter Bunny. We did several special Easter breakfasts, with photos. But I also remember a few times I took the kids on special egg hunts with other mom’s and their kids.

So, it was a combination of our family only (my husband, myself, and my two kids) and sometimes just me as Super Mom taking them and meeting up with my other mom friends. After church we then go to my in-laws’ home in Canton and we spend time with cousins and a nice meal my mother-in-law makes. I bring a side dish. One year I made a lamb cake, but it really looked more like a bear. Then I have made the traditional bunny cake using round cake pans and cutting them to make the shape of the ears and a bow tie. I typically do not mess that up.

Then the in laws would have a big basket for each grandkid and they would hide them outside, weather permitting. The best year was when my son’s basket got hoisted up the huge flagpole that usually holds the American flag. That took a while to find. The other best year was when they hid my son’s basket on the roof of their ranch house. For some reason we like to pick on my son.

The other fun tradition is in the egg hunt there would always be a bigger golden plastic egg for the adults to find and it would have a large amount of money in it, and it was always extremely challenging to find. The kids’ eggs would have either some coins, chocolate, or jellybeans. And most of the egg hunts took place indoors due to weather. We do not do egg hunts anymore because all the grandkids are older. But the Easter meal is awesome. My children still receive Easter goodies from the grandparents, but it is usually in a nice gift bag now. It is a day where we can all just spend time relaxing and talking to each other, catching up on life. But I think I am going to ask my mother-in-law if we can do the adult golden egg hunt. Only one winner. Life can be rough.