Easter in Sweden

[Dreamwoven]

Sweden is a Lutheran country, I don't know if this is relevant or not but Good Friday used to be a sort of day of mourning when I first moved there. Even the Thursday preceding it, called Skärtorsdag ( meaning "Cut Thursday") was a time of mourning. Funereal music on the radio, all entertainment closed, people went about with long faces. I was very surprised! By the late 1960s this was coming to an end. Now the whole holiday period is one of eating and celebration. A time to eat roast chicken, buy cream filled bakelser including Semlor (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semla), painting and decorating eggs, and when children expect presents, usually chocolates. The semlor get more creamy and larger every year. The contrast between the mourning for Christ on the cross and the resurrection is no longer there. The long weekend (from Cut Thursday to Easter Monday) is also used to travel to the mountains and go skiing.

[YesNo]

So the Swedes have a five day holiday for Easter. The semla look like they would be sweet with that creamy filling. It is interesting how quickly customs change.

[Helga]

Every Easter here on the ice people talk about how this holiday has changed, my mom talks about how she wasn't allowed to play games or cards or anything. Now it is like you say a vacation, 5 day vacation (here on the ice we have 'the second' in everything). A lot of food and parties and pretty much every kid gets a Easter egg, don't know if there are similar eggs in other countries but here they are like this https://www.google.is/search?q=p%C3%A1skaegg&biw=1291&bih=702&site=webhp&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&sqi=2&ved=0ahUKEwih-J6b4t7LAhWKbRQKHUveCIIQ_AUIBigB&dpr=0.9

This is just google images, but there are many different kinds and all of them are filled with candy. My son prefers a paper egg that I fill with candy he likes and a lego minifigure or two (or 4). This Easter my son is with his dad so I bought myself an egg to eat while he is away and I am studying all day. The egg I bought is one kilo, it's bigger than my head...

It is a skiing or eating holiday here on the ice

[Tyrion Cheddar]

The area I live in New England is very Christian, in a sort of overt way, and was clearly settled by German immigrants long ago as it remains a heavily German Lutheran population. There is also a major Jehovah Witness population here, with a large headquarters and a few churches of theirs in the area. Now I never ordinarily hear people talking their religion or saying anything to me about it, but being Jewish, I've learned by observation how big a holiday and celebration Easter is for Christians, as the people I run into here and there automatically ask me what I'm doing for Easter. This may be something you have to be Jewish to understand, the feeling of always being the outsider to the degree that (and this always surprises me, even after all these years) it never even occurs to people that you might be Jewish, or at least not Christian. The people are friendly, cheerful, and nice but I keep getting this question "What are you doing for Easter?" as if it's a given that we're all Christian. It's an experience of otherness, of being so "outside" that it never even occurs to most people that you exist. I'm not offended, it just always amazes me how many people live in a mentally insular world to the point that the possible existence of people and things outside that world doesn't register with them. Ah, well, I shall shrug and eat a chocolate bunny. ;-)

[Danik 2016]

Brazil is a country with a catholic tradition. This means that on God Friday we have the procession of Our Dead Lord passing under our windows. It must have been solemn in other times, but now the priests and the singers use microphones and sound amplifiers.
Some people still fast on Friday and on Sunday there is the big family lunch usually starred by a codfish dish.Children and often adults too get chocolate eggs.
Of course the other religions are represented here too. Religion is not a big issue here, race is.
Sometimes race and religion are mixed. I am a catholic jew, that means my race is jewish but I am catholic by religion. My father never professed any religion and my mother's religion is Lutheran.

[Dreamwoven]

My father was jewish and my mother catholic. Both were atheists, as I am.

[bounty]

dreamwoven, ive long recognized that "jewish" can refer both to genetic/ethnic roots and to religious practice but this might be the first ive heard of "catholic" being used in a similar way---obviously not a genetic/ethnic one, but one used to describe someone other than a practicing believing catholic, for whom "atheism" would be a contradiction in terms.

[Dreamwoven]

I was born in the war, and my mother thought that if Hitler had invaded Britain I would be better taken care of as a catholic. In practice this was probably a mistake on her part, but she had me baptised anyway. In the end it didn't make any difference. Hitler's invasion never took place.

[Dreamwoven]

The winter here still lingers. We have a couple of inches of slushy snow and temperatures around zero celsius. Cold north winds makes it feel wintry, too. No leaves on the trees yet, though the swelling buds of the lilac is noticable.