Easter

Easter. One of those holidays you spend around your family at least where I come from, and particularly in my family. I can clearly remember being a child and being veeery excited for Easter. A school-break of about 10 days, including 2 weekends of tradition and even presents. Who wouldn't love that?

First I have to say that my parents both come from small villages in the countryside in Austria and my family is catholic. So each year on Whitsunday we (my parents, my brother my sister and me) used to go and visit my grandmother on the countryside. In the village centre there was this procession leading from one main square into church. It was (and probably still is) a big deal to all locals and us of course. We all were given these (depending on how tall and strong you were) huge "Palmbuschen", which are basically tree branches or wooden sticks decorated in the traditional way with apples, ribbons and I think something like needles of fir trees (this varies from village to village). The children and teenagers carried these huge things at least twice their size with them, whereas the adults (mostly the women) carried a handy little one. Basically these Palmbuschen symbolise a certain event which is mentioned in the Bible. Anyway, we always took part in this procession to church but at the last chance we kind of stole ourselves away (my Granny's idea) and went to have some Würstl (traditional thing in Austria. You just go and have some sausages^^) and had a great time sitting in this traditional Restaurant. Every one of us (my grandma, my cousins, my siblings and me) enjoying the fact that the rest of the village was in church and we had the Restaurant to ourselves :)

I really enjoyed this tradition. Unfortunately it's been years since I last had the pleasure of taking part. But as you can imagine this was a nice start for my school-break.

Then there was one more week until Easter. I loved Easter. Running around in the garden (or (since the weather wasn't nice enough most of the time) inside) at my grandparents house looking for the  Easter-baskets and little treats the Easter bunny had hidden for us.

I have to admit: I was really fortunate to grow up with traditions like that and family, that completely went all out for me and my siblings to enjoy this event. Like Christmas time, Easter is very much associated with family and traditions for me.

This year I am not at home for Easter, but my cousin came to visit me over the Easter-holidays so I'll have a part of my family by my side.

I'd love to hear/read about your greatest Easter-memory and/or traditions you have about Easter, so email me or comment below. I'm looking forward to reading your stories :)

Happy Easter and I hope you'll go out and search for little treats yourself!

Cheers for now,

Mags