When I was a child, Easter Sunday meant a trip to church and then off to the nearest hill to roll our eggs.
The week leading up to Easter Sunday was spent boiling eggs and decorating them in the brightest colours we could. My brother and I would have competitions to see how many different colours we could get on the one egg. They were decorated with circles, spirals, zig-zags and even glitter if we could get our hands on it!
All through the hour-long church service we would wriggle and giggle and be on tenterhooks until it was over and we could get to our nearest hill. Once there, there would be about 20-30 children all with two or three eggs ready to roll. The idea behind egg rolling was to symbolise the rolling of the stone from the cave when Jesus was resurrected – or so we were told at Sunday school.
At first it would be quite organised, with four or five children stepping forward at a time to roll their eggs, waiting to see which ones burst open and which ones made it to the bottom intact. But after a while our excitement would get the better of us and there were eggs rolling all over the place, closely followed by children who had decided it looked quite fun.
This is one of my favourite childhood memories. Nowadays Easter has become a mini-Christmas, with children expecting gifts rather than chocolate eggs, and the Easter Bunny making an appearance. Somehow the meaning and simplicity has been lost.
Do you have a favourite childhood memory of Easter? Do you think Easter has lost its meaning?
