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04/10/2009
MAKE BUNNY FAST
Urgent! Urgent! I must know immediately: What the hell does the Easter Bunny do these days?
To millions of people — billions? — worldwide, Easter is about the joyful resurrection of Jesus Christ. I'm not a Christian, but we do celebrate Easter. I don't feel strange about this, not given Easter's pagan underpinnings. (Something about a whole herd of determined rabbits moving Christ's tombstone aside, having been informed by reliable sources that there were, like, bushels of apples inside. But don't quote me on that, as I am no theologian.) We mark the advent of spring. We herald the rebirth of the earth after its long winter of dormancy. And we eat an awful lot of hard-boiled eggs and candy. Consuming these things is not at issue. How they get here is.
When I was a kid, the Easter Bunny was kind of your turnkey single-source Easter-related solution provider. (Synergy had not yet been invented, or I'm pretty sure he'd have leveraged some.) He did it all: dyed eggs, hid them, and filled our waiting baskets with chocolate rabbits, marshmallow chicks, and those weird giant orange circus peanuts that only my father liked. (No, we never twigged. Either we weren't very bright, or were too bright to ask a lot of awkward questions when it came to free candy. Stupid like a fox.)
But I am afraid times have changed. Earlier this week Paul and Charlie came back from the grocery store with an egg-dyeing kit and a package of empty plastic Easter eggs. To my look of outrage, Paul's answer was an eloquent eye-roll. In a single gesture, he managed to communicate an appalling truth: So aggressively is Easter now marketed to children that it was impossible to avoid the towering displays of candy, baskets, and kits just begging kids to pimp my ovoid. (If they had meant for these things to remain the province of adults, the merchandise would have been discreetly tucked among the root vegetables, or perhaps the Vagisil.) And rather than answer a lot of awkward questions off the cuff right in the store, a purchase was made, a child pacified, and a holiday paradigm mangled.
I made a panicked call to my mother. She confirmed the upsetting trend. My nephews, it turns out, leave a basket of dyed eggs in the middle of the dining room table on Easter Eve. It seems that children no longer awaken on Easter morning, dewy-eyed with wonder, to ponder the mystery of exactly how a giant rabbit might contrive to boil two dozen eggs when rabbits don't even have thumbs, much less stoves, cookware, and a reliable source of clean-burning fuel. Apparently the only thing the Easter Bunny does nowadays is hide the damned things. What kind of lazy-assed giant rabbit are we dealing with here?
To further complicate the matter, there are two (2) local Easter egg hunts in our area, one sponsored by the town recreation department on Saturday — Note to self: Blandly ask director how we could possibly have missed the announcement of the citywide afikomen hunt — and another for our neighborhood on Sunday. In short, the place is just crawling with Easter. As a staunch atheist but an even stauncher chocolatarian, I do not necessarily disapprove. I just wonder what the hell we're supposed to do about it.
Something, clearly, because Charlie believes, despite being told by a colleague at acrobat school — okay, a little girl in a purple velour leotard at gymnastics class — that the Easter Bunny isn't real. "Oh, he comes to our house," I told her pleasantly, "and brings lots and lots of candy that we're then allowed to eat." I'd have felt bad about doing so, seeing her whirl around to her mother with an accusing look on her face, had her mother not sweetly asked Charlie the previous week, "But don't you want to take karate lessons?" You're on notice, lady: I fight dirty. (Just in case, I'm saving the suggestion of hiring a team of performing unicorn ponies to entertain at her birthday party.)
The current plan is to dye eggs with Charlie, and then to leave them in a conspicuous place for the Right Honorable Sylvilagus robustus to hide. (I'm told that's fun, looking for desirable items that are missing. Which is odd, because Charlie has on other occasions given me the distinct impression that when it's a 3/4" piece of plastic that you absolutely must have now, the search is no fun at all and must be conducted exclusively by an adult while you moo piteously in the background.) The good M. Lagomorph will also fill and hide those plastic eggs, I suppose, as that is what seems to be expected of him. He will also bring a small array of inedible treats — something sure to delight a child, like maybe a value pack of three-way light bulbs or a brand-new roll of freezer tape. (If I have to make a special trip to the store for dyeable white eggs and plain old vinegar, damn it, I'm getting myself presents, too.) And we'll go to the local functions and hunt the very hell out of whatever has been hidden. Beyond that, am I covered?
Until this year I had been unaware of this dramatic shift in the Easter Bunny's job description. (Children dyeing eggs, the very idea! What's next, sending them to work in coal mines? Expecting them to find their own freaking Playmobil widget that you told them and told them not to play with amid the sofa cushions?) If you celebrate Easter, what did you do as a kid — you know, back when men were men and smoking was mandatory and rabbits could be counted on to do a decent day's work? What do you do now? Swift replies appreciated, with extra points to anyone who can convince me that I don't need to go to the store. The brown eggs and Sauternes vinegar I have on hand will work just fine for dyeing...right?
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Since my easter bunny had none of the tools of the trade we were in charge of dying {hmmmmm, sounds wrong, oh well, I got manic just reading that}. But ... the dying was the fun part, using crayons to trick the dye hanging out with my creative mom and my "dearg-d is it time for this again" dad.
I knew they hid them but the basket was from the bunny.
Good luck.
Well here in the UK, we didn't really have the easter bunny though I was given a chocolate easter egg from my parents and grandparents. I also dyed eggs with my mum. FWIW we did have Father Christmas and the tooth fairy. I am having the easter bunny bring eggs for my daughter though, so it looks like easter is bigger everywhere.
Hmm... I seem to remember dying eggs as a child - This would have been 15-20 years ago so it mustn't be too recent a development. I suppose it's just a family thing.
The mythology in my household went like this: We'd dye the eggs the night before and leave them in the fridge. After we went to bed, my mother would "leave them on the porch" for the Easter Bunny to hide about the yard, along with the plastic eggs with candy in them. Then, in the morning, my mother would go outside and "make sure the bunny did his job", which was why we'd see her outside when we woke up in the morning. Then we'd find the eggs and eat the candy! But not the eggs, because they tend to be warm by that point.
When I was a kid in the late '70s in rural New England, things were exactly as you describe them in your neighborhood today. We colored all the eggs and put them in our baskets, and woke up on Easter morning to find them replaced with candy, eggs distributed to the same dozen hiding spots every year. The churches all had an egg hunts, as did many of the civic organizations.
i'm currently laughing my head off. you're freaking hilarious. i have no advice, i have no kids of my own and it's been a looooooooooooong time since i've done anything easter egg related, but dude. you're so right. very, very lame the way easter has turned out.
We never really did much in the way of hiding/hunting eggs. We usually dyed eggs the night before, but we didn’t do anything with them besides make boiled egg sandwiches for a few days. The Easter Bunny brought the baskets with all the goodies and we found them on the kitchen table in the morning. Then we put on our fancy dresses and went to church for like, the only day that year or something. (We were not a church-going family, but I think my mom wanted to show off the dresses.)
We dyed hard-boiled eggs with my mom sometime in the couple days before Easter. We then stuck them back in the fridge and brought them out to display in a basket for a centerpiece for Easter dinner with the relatives. Our Easter bunny had nothing to do with them.
The Easter bunny, instead, was in charge of hiding candy. We would leave our baskets out on the dining room table the night before, and when we woke up, there would usually be a chocolate bunny in them, and candy would be hidden around the house for us to find. Collect. Eat. Etc.
Brown eggs, yes. Done it. Lovely earthy colors, actually, and my boy thought they were kewl.
Sauternes vinegar? Hmm. Sounds like something I'd far rather drink than waste on eggs.
You don't have to do squat else! All we got was the candy, too, and it was still miraculous, so I say you're golden. I'm pushing 30 and some of my friends do "presents" from the easter bunny for their kids, little things that fit in a basket...but doesn't that reduce the bribery quotient on Santa and the stocking? Conundrum?
My parents filled plastic eggs with jellybeans and little chocolate eggs and hid them either inside or outside, depending on the Ohio spring weather, but we always helped dye the hard-boiled ones. They were, um..arty. And my dad's family always tries to dye an egg BLACK. Because you know all that dye is good for you.
Julie -You crack me up! I'm in the middle of figuring out the same thing - my 4 yr old is old enough to start remembering traditions - so what do I want those to be?!?! I bought the dye kit the other day, but forgot the eggs. I eat brown eggs, which I learned last year, can't really be dyed. So now, is it worth a special trip to the store for a dozen white eggs, that we'll make a colossal mess dying, that nobody will eat afterwards? Or do we just stick with the environmental unfriendly plastic eggs that we somehow have collected a bajillion of (thanks, preschool class). My kids know the Bunny is coming Sat night - I just don't know yet what he's bringing and how involved we'll all be in the preparations. Running low on time to figure it out - especially if I have to make that unplanned trip to the store!
I was a child in the Midwest in the late 70's and early 80's, and we always dyed the eggs with our family. As did all of my friends. Then the Easter bunny came and hid them, and left us a basket full of candy and fun things. I had no idea that in some families the parents did the egg dying--that's the fun part! I'm actually doing it this afternoon with my 2.5 year old son when he wakes up from his nap.
As kids, we were always involved in the egg dyeing process, then the easter bunny would take the eggs out of the fridge and hide them. He also left baskets for us (the same baskets every year...recently I heard that some "easter bunnies" leave a brand new basket every year too? Where on earth do you store all of these baskets?), and additionally he hid plastic eggs full of pastel m&ms. We would then put all of our m&ms in a communal family bowl and "share" them, which meant my dad ate them all the first night.
I don't remember ever having a problem with the fact that they sold plastic eggs at CVS (or People's Drug I guess it was called at the time) I just figured my mom had the eggs and the bunny hid them for her. You're right Julie, many inconsistencies can be overlooked when you're being given free candy!
Our family tradition was to color the eggs a couple days before Easter (so they could look nice in the basket when we went to church on Saturday to get the baskets blessed). Then, like halfway intelligent people who fear food poisoning and misplaced eggs, we put the colored eggs into the fridge for my dad to eat. Easter baskets were retrieved from storage, and the Easter Bunny would fill them with candy and hide them (the baskets) in the house somewhere. There were no toys. Dad ate all the black jelly beans. And the year when the Easter Bunny was foolish to "hide" that 5 lb of Fannie May Mint Meltaways in the back of the refrigerator...well, let's say I was happy for days before Easter, but no one else in the house was!
I don't understand where the concept of the Easter present came from. I guess if you don't want your kid to have candy, then you would be foolish enough to buy presents. But if you don't give your kid candy once in a while, then that's just crazy!
At my house, as a kid, we dyed the eggs for fun. As our yard was weedy and ill-kempt - the Easter Bunny hid our baskets in the house and we had to hunt THOSE down. I can still remember the boys yelling "I found Rachel's basket!" but not telling me where.
Easter was also the end of the Santa/Tooth Fairy/Easter Bunny road for me. I got some look through the hole egg one year and marveled at where the Easter Bunny could have gotten that. My Mother looked at me and said "dfladjjdaldkj". I looked at her and said "but you work there. Ohhhhhhh....." End of the line for the fantasy life.
Sorry, we did dye our eggs as kids, although my mother never let us dye as many as *I* felt the occasion warranted (approximately one gross). We always had to stop at 12. Also, the EB didn't do any of this hunt the stuff down nonsense. He came, filled baskets, and left. Also, I hail from the days when the only thing in the basket was candy - no toys, DVDs, stuffed animals, etc. Geez, I must have been young when the earth was still cooling!
I'm with Kristin on dying eggs with your kids. And be sure that you remember how many eggs the Easter bunny hides, and where, since you don't want to have search for one a few days later.
We had no advanced warning of easter - no dyeing or anything. On easter morning we would wake up to an empty basket beside the bed, and a trail of little candies (chocolate eggs and M&M's and the like) leading all over the house. Each trail would have two or three branches off it - and at the end of each branch would be a bigger treat - always a big chocolate rabbit, sometimes a shirt or other needed item that was more fun to get as a gift, a book, that sort of thing.
I'm 55 years old and definitely remember home egg decorating projects in addition to neighborhood hunts and parents leaving candy. We didn't take the Bunny part too seriously, but we were "stupid like foxes" when it came to Santa, too. Don't see why you can't convey the "useful myth" idea and keep it fun. With your design gifts and interest in quilts, I could see you going wild with Ukrainian egg type decorating - like you have the time -- or hey, give us a post with wacko online decorated eggs. Also, I've been trying for years to find a children's picture book I remember about Pennsylvania Amish (or maybe they were Mennonite) children hunting for Easter eggs. One girl looks in the attic and discovers a box of painted wooden eggs from the Old Country. They decorate a tree with all the eggs they have found. It was beautifully illustrated and gave a nice story about cultural traditions of Easter with only a light touch about the religious side of things.
Hmmm...I dyed my own eggs with my brother. and then the easter bunny hid them (this was in the 70s and 80s in the south). The easter bunny, however, also provided the basket, which seemed to appear out of nowhere that was filled with candy (which i did not buy) and sometimes a small easterish book or stuffed animal. the basket also always included a chocolate easter bunny (except for the one year that my dog ate it before i was able to locate the basket and had to be taken to the Vet ER on easter). it was the pursuit of that basket that would drive me wild. sometimes the easter bunny would leave tantalizing notes as clues in plastic eggs, each giving a hint as to where the next clue might be...and then the last clue would lead to the basket. I found that to be oodles of fun.
Eggs - brown eggs work beautifully for dyeing. Colors come out nice. The dark ones, anyway - yellow is pretty pukey...in fact resembles baby poop remarkably in color. Purple, blue, red are nice though.
We have always dyed eggs. I guess we've never been Easter Bunny believers, though. The Easter Bunny's role was always rather nebulous. Like, yeah, Santa delivers presents but there's also a Santa at the mall who is not perhaps the real Santa, b/c he's in the N Pole doing his very important business. THE Easter Bunny might deliver eggs Somewhere, but not here - the parents and older kids do that.
when i was a kid, my mom and i would dye eggs together. the "easter bunny" would hide those plastic eggs filled with either candy or change and leave a basket filled with candy and sometimes toys.
The kids always decorated the eggs at our house too (in the 70s), and the Easter Bunny would sneak them out of the fridge in the early morning and hide them. That's what I've always done with my kids as well. That way works out better anyway; if I can't get two minutes to pee in privacy, I have no idea where I'd find the time to clandestinely dye a bunch of eggs.
(Incidentally, I saw this on Etsy the other day. It's another explanation of where the Bunny gets the eggs: CraftyHedgehog)
I'm 31 and I always dyed eggs as a child. When I was much younger, my mom would hide them and my younger sisters and I would find them. For some reason, I always knew "the Easter Bunny" to be my mother, but Santa remained some mythical jolly fat man in a red suit until I was much older. But I digress....
Once my sisters and I were in our teens (or nearly there), our egg hunts evolved into something quite a bit more barbaric than the pastel, idyllic scenes usually associated with Easter. We still have egg hunts (with us and my husband as the seekers) that we participate in. Yes -- we're grown children. It's a battle: http://smartone.typepad.com/smartone/2008/03/this-aint-yo-ma.html
A tradition we did/do that you might not have to leave the house for is the making of the Easter Bunny cake. A regular box mix (or homemade if you're really feeling froggy) baked in two circular cake pans can easily be cut and shaped into the bunny's head. Use one round cake for the head, and cut pointy ears from the other cake. Assemble the cake on a foil-covered sheet of cardboard or cookie sheet. Frost with white frosting (or chocolate for a teachable moment in equal opportunities) and use M&Ms, jelly beans, and/or other candies for the eyes and mouth.
When I was a kid, the bunny left a filled basket outside my bedroom door. My parents did the rest, and I knew it.
For my own kid, I will continue the basket tradition and will also bake a bunny cake and dye eggs with my son. Then I think we will leave the eggs out for the bunny to find, and he/she will hide the eggs while he sleeps, at the same time he dumps the basket off.
Dude. Tell your husband that if he wants to dye eggs with your child, he should also acquire all the necessary materials and lead the set-up and clean-up process. Seems like a no-brainer there.
When I was a kid we dyed eggs whole or painted them with food colouring using q-tips, depending on the method du jour. Then my parents - yes, we were fully aware it was them and it was never pretended otherwise - either hid them randomly all over the farm or, a couple of memorable years, staged a treasure hunt with clues that would lead to the next egg and clue, until we ended up at a jackpot of giant chocolate egg decorated with fondant and filled with chocolates.
We ended the festivities by rolling our eggs (the real, decorated hardboiled ones) on the lawn. This was unheard of amongst our classmates but was a tradition my father brought with him from Scotland.
I'm guilty. My baskets are a bit, well, overdone. I love holidays that involve invisible creatures dropping off presents and treats. So, my poor husband is the baffled one who can't quite figure out how we're going to hide eggs AND keep the dogs from eating them. Now, that's a trick :).
This year Ben's basket will have another train for his collection and a bean bag Rocket from Little Einsteins.
My sister and I got Easter Baskets with some candy on the breakfast table Easter morning. We ate some and then skipped off to church where we had another Easter egg hunt, with more candy that we were immediately allowed to consume, and then we went to my Grandmother's house, where we were given even more candy for immediate consumption. Then we went home and probably ate more candy.
Dyeing eggs wasn't a big thing for us, we might do it the day before or something, but we just did it because it was fun, and we just ate the eggs afterward...
We always dyed eggs, too. I've actually never heard of the Easter bunny doing that.
Sorry, but this is either a regional thing or your mother is LYING. To quote that one robot from Wall-E, "Whoa, whoa, whoa." We ALWAYS dyed our own eggs as far back as I can remember. It was a big deal, a very fun activity and everyone I know also dyed their eggs. Hell, I live in Austria now and they bring in white eggs special just so you can dye them like privileged American children. Sadly, they won't import plain white vinegar or baking soda in anything other than little packets, but I digress.
Think back, was your mother a rather fastidious person? If so, you might have been sold a bill of goods there, my friend. However, if my husband brought home egg dye, a toddler and a baby then he'd be responsible for the outcome of that.
We always dyed eggs with our mom. We'd have an Easter Egg hunt outside, and find an Easter basket on Easter morning with mostly jellybeans (which I never really cared for) and a few choice malted eggs and chocolate eggs. No gifts of any kind.
Now that I'm a mom, I color eggs with my kids, but they are for eating, not hiding. I fill plastic eggs with jellybeans or something else that won't melt in the sun and hide them in the yard for them to find. For extra fun, the kids then hide the eggs for the adults to find. The kids leave their empty baskets out the night before Easter; the Easter bunny fills the baskets and hides them. I like to get creative filling the baskets so there's not so much candy. I always include Goldfish crackers and fruit snacks with the candy, plus a large bottle of bubbles.
I always had two egg-coloring parties. Once at home with my Mom, and one with my Grandma at her house. Grandma put the eggs in her fridge as soon as they were dry and made egg salad for a few days. :) The Bunny (Mom) hid the dyed eggs one year. Apparently she didn't count how many were hidden, and I didn't find a couple. We found them weeks later. From that year on the Bunny hid plastic eggs with change or candy in them. I still colored eggs, but they became lunch for my Dad. The Bunny always left a basket full of candy on the kitchen table.
It sounds like everybody else had a Easter Bunny that went to the same school as Sinter Klaus or something. Leave baskets out? Replacing dyed eggs with candy? What is this whereof y'all speak? Our easter bunny just left us new baskets full of Good Chocolate, Gross Chocolate, and plastic grass. There on the rug in front of the fireplace. Soon to be put up on top of the refrigerator and doled out to us in miserly pieces until we forgot about.
Or until we figured out how to push the chair over to the fridge.
Growing up, we always dyed the eggs ourselves and then the Easter bunny hid them around the house for an egg hunt easter morning, usually culminating in the search for the glorious Easter basket and/or chocolate bunny. My mom was very good about keeping the basket and candy hidden ahead of time but the eggs? A family event.
We never dyed eggs, nor did we hunt for dyed eggs. This was NOT in my mom's repertoire, as the mother of 6 children. I think when I was really little there might have been a couple plastic eggs scattered. Mostly we got a big basket with the giant chocolate rabbit.
My fondest memory is that my dad always bought the girls hyacinths for Easter morning. The house always smelled beautiful. Since my children will celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover, I'm not sure how to work in the chocolate bunnies and flowers. Suggestions welcome!
When I was little, my sisters and I would dye eggs (with parents' help), and leave them in the fridge.
In the morning we'd find all the eggs hiding (inside, we live in Colorado and it's too *!?*& cold for early morning outside egg hunts). Also, there would be baskets (also hiding!) full of candy and springtime gifts (bubbles, kites, sidewalk chalk, etc.)
In addition to the eggs we colored and hid there would be plastic ones filled with yet more candy and sometimes money.
We're not Christian around here either, so much so that we actually thought Easter was a few weeks ago. We dyed eggs before realizing it was not actually Easter yet. 2-year-old still got to find hidden eggs. We are calling it a practice run. Will do it all again this Sunday plus! basket and candy, etc.
You can use lemon juice instead of vinegar, but the colors won't be quite as bright.
it's all about building traditions, right? i was allowed to dye eggs with my mother when i was 9 or 10, before that the easter bunny dyed them and hid them in the garden all by himself. my parents were good at making me believe in the easter bunny, i really really believed in him...
For the life of me I can't remember all the details besides finding our baskets in the house and a traditional egg hunt at a local company park.
I don't remember dying eggs but do remember finding them.
Also we typically had our egg hunt inside as AZ springs can be 100 degrees...you DON'T want a child finding a plastic egg with some melted chocolate in it. That's just cruel and unusual punishment. Oh and nevermind about finding eggs in the yard 2-3 weeks after Easter on year. I think that happened once, after that it was egg hunts in the house.
When we were kids, we usually dyed Easter eggs with my paternal grandmother. The last year that we dyed eggs with her, was very memorable. My grandmother was a pretty serious alcoholic, we didn't really "know" what was wrong with Grammy, we rarely spent time with her alone, as my mom was always concerned she'd pass out, and we'd be unsupervised. The last easter (as my sister and I refer to it) we were older, 7 and 10ish, and my parents had somewhere to be on that saturday afternoon. They dropped us off, and didn't come inside. When we went it, my grandmother had already dyed all of the eggs. My sister (7), was very upset, but the funniest part was my grandmother peeled the eggs before she dyed them. So not only did she dye the eggs without us, but she peeled the eggs, and soaked them in the vinagar and food coloring with no shells....pretty funny now. Not so much then. No deviled eggs with Easter dinner either...
If you think that's bad...
We sort of leave the bunny out of the equation altogether. We all dye the eggs, and then we...take turns hiding and seeking the eggs! No bunny anywhere! And the baskets full of junk? Are from us!
But in my defense, that's the way we did it when I was a kid...so I know no other way.
I dyed eggs with my grandmother as a child, and I'm 41 now. The ones we dyed were the ones that served as centerpieces on the tables, of course. I never twigged to the ones I found looking remarkably similar to the ones we had dyed. Of course I also was firmly convinced that there was a tooth fairy until at least ten or eleven, so take that FWIW. We had a hunt in Gramma's back yard. The Bunny hid them. We got prizes for most eggs found, number of particular color, most chocolate bunnies found. And we always found some from the previous year, despite careful counting on the parts of the grown-ups. Eew. Oh and the Bunny brought a sugar-treat-filled basket to our doorsteps.
Now, we surreptitiously buy all the crap and hide it until the kids go to bed on Saturday, and then furiously fill plastic eggs and put the baskets out on the porch before we go to bed. We still go to my Gramma's house, though she's gone, and my cousin hides the eggs, though the kids still think it's the Bunny who brings the baskets and hides the eggs.
Oh, and now they have dye kits that don't need vinegar and are a lot more fun to use. The ones with bags where you throw in some dye and then put the egg in and squish it gently around are fun for young and old.
Ah, for a REAL Jewish-Athiest All-Out Easter celebration it's worth me hauling out my old column for your pleasure:
http://www.literarymama.com/columns/reddiaperdharma/archives/2007/04/the_hiders_and.html
Forget the eggs.... it's all about the CANDY.
According to my 3 year old son, we have to dye eggs and put them outside on Easter eve so that the Easter Bunny can see we're serious about Easter and are deserving of chocolate.
I don't know where he got this, but I just returned from a run to Stop and Shop where I stocked up on white eggs and Paas egg dyeing kits.
We color eggs with the kids. It's fun. Put a plastic tablecloth across your table and go to it. I make up the baskets and hide them and put them out Easter morning. Easter bunny aside (mine are mostly too old to believe) they still enjoy a basket of treats.
Deal was, I left out a gigantic carrot for the Easter bunny. When I woke up in the morning, there were rabbitlike bite marks on it.
We dyed eggs sometimes, not always. And the basket was always hidden, in harder and harder places each year, until the year I couldn't find it after two hours and cried myself into a fit because he had clearly forgotten about me.
And then I was reminded that the Easter Bunny loves vegetables, and I was allowed to have some of the candy in my basket after every meal, provided I finished my veg.
I forgot to add that I don't like to go overboard with the candy so my kids each get a nice book, a very small toy (like Bubbles or a baby rattle for the baby), and a handful of Dove chocolate eggs and Starburst Jelly beans in their baskets.
We always dyed our own eggs. And then spent the next week eating rainbow colored egg salad sandwiches for lunch.
The Easter Bunny brought baskets of candy and small gifts and hid them around the living room because it's usually still ridiculously cold on Easter in Michigan and we were on our way to church and my mom wasn't about to let us get all dirty searching the yard. Not that they told us THAT, mind you.
We dyed eggs but did not hunt them. I'm not sure what happened to the dyed eggs, I think they just sat in a bowl on the dining room table?
Easter morning, we woke up to a "candy hunt" in the living room to look for jelly beans, Cadbury cream eggs, etc. We may have believed at one time in the Easter Bunny hiding stuff but that belief died long before the Santa one and we knew it was my parents and just had fun looking. We got an Easter basket full of candy and a chocolate bunny and usually a book or something non-consumable.
This was the 70's in Canada, but we definitely dyed eggs, it was the main Easter craft. There would always be some CBC television special on how Hungarians and Russians make their amazing wax/dye egg art. We woke up to an Easter basket full of chocolate nestled in bright green plastic "grass." My parents were agnostic, but they did believe in chocolate for holidays. My mom always cooked a turkey for Easter dinner, and then we would have an egg hunt using eggs we'd dyed (often in ruts of frozen mud) plus some little chocolate ones and we'd go find those.