Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Your Turn

I remember walking through stores as a kid around Easter time and there were so many different books and dyes and designs with which to dye Easter eggs. Most of the eggs you found during hunts were real eggs and if you missed one, you generally found it in May when it went bad and stunk up the house. Now though it seems like there are very few dye kits and the holiday basically just involves buying a bunch of chocolate and giving it to your kid. Are there people who still dye eggs? Have egg hunts? What are some of your traditions?


37 comments:

  1. My family is part Ukrainian, so we still dye the eggs. We also have a traditional Ukrainian meal consisting of pedaheh, holopchi, and rugelach for dessert.

    I love Easter.

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  2. Sorry.

    That's perogies, cabbage rolls and, uh, rugelach for all you non-Slavs.

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  3. We still dye eggs every year. It's our tradition to dye them on Saturday night as a family, and then we hide them the next day for our 7 year old son. The fifteen year old girl still dyes, but doesn't partake of the hunt.

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  4. We dye eggs and the bunny hides them and Easter Sunday, the kids go mad hunting. Good times!!

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  5. Oh yes, we still dye eggs. I've been doing the same traditions for 31 years now, it's just my kids that are doing it. Easter, we go to my 92 year old Grandma's house and mine and my sister's children are now the egg dyers. We still have a real egg Easter hunt where everyone has an egg specially dyed with their name on it. Even the Grandparents have to hunt for their egg. Grandpa's is always dyed green so it's hardest to find. It's very Norman Rockwell for a very non-Norman Rockwell family, but it's nice and cozy and I wouldn't change a thing.

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  6. I dye eggs with the kids every year and they love it...dont hide real ones though, only the plastic filled ones and totally because i dont like the idea of food being placed in random places in my house. When I was little w e never used the plastic ones at all.

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  8. A couple more things:

    My family has an open door policy on Easter and we litterally keep the door open for people who don't have anyone to spend the day with to come in and enjoy. After we eat we take the dyed eggs and play a game that consists of people hitting their eggs against one and other until one egg and person is left standing. That person is supposed to have good luck for the rest of the year.


    (had to edit)

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    Replies
    1. Oh please, oh please can I come! Sounds like so much fun! I am half Slavic if that helps the party ;)

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    2. Oh we do that too! We call it "pocing" and Easter is Jour De Poc! We're Cajun French.

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  9. I still dye a few eggs but there's no kids to hide them for. What I miss are the old coconut and fruit and nut eggs. I used to love them.

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  10. we dye eggs but hide plastic ones with chocolates inside.

    there are baskets with candy for the kids, but nothing too extravagant.

    I write up a set of clues (that rhyme) and leave them all over the house for the kids to use to locate their Easter Baskets. I really like that part of the holiday...

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  11. We dye eggs with vinegar and food coloring and hide them around the house. I didn't realize that everyone didn't do it that way.

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  12. We dyed a few eggs when our daughter was younger and make crazy colored deviled eggs or egg salad with them for brunch.

    The big thing for my family is cascarones (confetti eggs). I'm from a large family and our only child LOVED Easter down in S. TX because it was all out mayhem with dozens and dozens and dozens of confetti eggs and stealth stealing out of kids baskets and the adults reverting to kid-like behaviors! Fun.

    We're not into a lot of junk and plastic things and we're veg so don't do marshmallow stuff because of the gelatin so we stick to really good chocolates and a few plastic eggs willed with cash.

    Now she's 19, in college but we still hide five plastic eggs really hard and she has to come over and hunt them. Takes crazy long since they could be anywhere. Totally worth her time though $$.

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  13. We dye eggs for fun and decor, but I hide plastic ones filled with treats (candy, cookies, money). I've always been afraid of finding a rotten egg a few months later, hence the plastic.

    For a couple of weeks after Easter, the short one insists on hiding them in the house, over and over, for me to find. It never gets old.

    @Sue Ellen - *mouth waters*

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  14. My family still does an egg hunt when we're home. My brother and I are in our early twenties. Always chocolate eggs, I don't think I've ever dyed eggs.

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  15. Rugelach, the best my mom makes double batches and one goes in the freezer. My grandfather would go uptown to the German candy makers and bakeries..I always got the biggest dark chocolate bunny that was filled with jellybeans and small chocolate eggs...
    We celebrate Easter and Passover...double the treats and Passover almond macarons are just like the French ones just fantastic...

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  16. Dying eggs is our major family traditions! While we use traditional dye kits (just the simple ones), we also do a beautiful egg that is wrapped tightly in the dry yellow onion peel and boiled in vinegar water. The reveal is breathtaking. And we hunt and re-hide eggs all day long. Before grandkids, the teens would bring their friends over to dye eggs, as their parents said they were 'too old' to do it at their own homes. They really have a great time! One day, when the kids and grandkids are grown, we'll still do our more mature onion peel eggs.

    Have to share, last year my 3 year old grandson got into my purse and found sanitary pads and wanted to know what they were. This happened right as we were setting up to dye eggs. So I convinced him that they were drying pads used for absorbing whatever. I happened to have some in my garage that were in a car emergency kit. So he gathered what was in my purse as well as those in the emergency kit and peeled the backing off and stuck them to the table so that each person had one to dry their eggs on! The best part was my teenage sons playing along like it wasn't anything out of the norm to have sanitary pads stuck to the kitchen table. Have to decide soon if this will become a new tradition.

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  17. My mom buys the rugelach from the Russian-Jewish bakery because she can't make it properly and "they know what they're doing", but she makes the rest.

    And you could probably all come. She's super serious about the policy. One year there was someone none of us knew save for one person. That's Easter for you.

    I think I've said too much.

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  18. omg @Lisa that is too funny! Love it!

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  19. We Poc eggs like Sue Ellen, but we also hunt eggs. We have the children's hunt, of couse- but then the adults go inside and the little ones hide the eggs for the adults to find. My dad cheats so bad...

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  20. I have 2 kids visiting today and we will dye eggs and celebrate Easter today b/c Sun my son is with his Dad. So ya, still do it!

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  21. I dye eggs most years even though I don't have kids. I don't decorate my house though. We usually go to my Aunt's house for brunch and the kids in the fam have an Easter hunt with plastic eggs with $$$ -- that was always my favorite too. When I was a little kid (70's) it was all about that too but it was at the park.

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  22. @Sue Ellen - One year we had a drunk man dressed as Santa spend about a half hour at our house on Christmas. After he left, we found that no one knew him. And no, he wasn't the real deal.

    We dye eggs every year. Only the plastic ones filled with candies get hidden.

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  23. We dye eggs and have egg hunts. We also go to church for 3 days during Holy Week. Last YR there was this really rotten smell like dead mice and we wondered what it was...and found out later it was the Easter eggs rotting after a MONTH!We had forgotten about them!

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  24. My sister has 2 boys and I have a girl and we still dye eggs and still have an egg hunt. We even still use that little metal egg holder that comes with the kit to dip the eggs down in. It's still impossible to use, but reminds me of my childhood. We always pick a few colors to leave an egg or tow in the longest to see how dark we can get it. Our Aunts, Uncles and Cousins from MI come in town every year for Easter. It's a huge party. Eat drink and be merry! We hide the hard boiled eggs with the plastic ones and when all is said and done, make deviled eggs with them. Nothing like colored deviled eggs. We also put coins and dollar bills in some of the big plastic eggs and the "special" desgin eggs. Growing up my Mom and Aunts would hold a contest for me, my siblings and cousins. They had several envelopes filled with additional cash for the one with the most eggs, the least eggs, the most hard boiled, the silver eggs, which just so happened to be the old Legg's panty hose container. My Mom recycled those into the Easter Egg decorations. I bet she still has them. Those were the ones you wanted to find. Those usually had the big money in. Ahh, the memories of Easter past. Traditions we continue and are going to pass down to our kids. Aunts, Uncles and Cousins will be arriving Thursday and Friday. We cannot wait. HAPPY EASTER EVERYONE!

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  25. I still dye eggs at Easter. And my baby loves to help me. It's really fun.

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  26. No egg dying here, but the Easter Bunny creates a whole elaborate treasure hunt every year, with clues & everything. Our daughter runs all over the house, inside and outside, for all the treasures & hidden goodies. Very little candy, more art supplies & a few favorite toys.

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  27. I miss dying eggs. The eggs here in the UK are brown. When I dared to mention dying eggs for Easter people looked at me as tho I suggested serving Rabbit for dinner!

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  28. We have having our 5th annual Easter Egg hunt party here- we have 5 acres, so it is REALLY fun for the kids, and afterwards we eat, playa nd ride the atv- maybe this year we can play toss the raw egg at the rider? I buy a crate of eggs and then some to dye- so much fun- thats over 100 eggs FYI.

    we always host a party- I went out and bought baskets today (thrift store $1.00 each for some REALLY cool baskets)- can you believe parents send kids to my house for a EGG HUNT without a basket?

    HAPPY EASTER

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  29. Anonymous1:40 PM

    Oh, Ms Cool, what a funny/scary/weird thing to have happen at Christmas! And pilly, I am jealous of your brown eggs, for some reason I like them better and think they taste better.

    My family has been egg dyers for at least three generations, but even the grandkids are big now ...16 and 20... so I don't know if anyone does it, but I see pre-colored ones for sale in the supermarket. I used to love the egg dying, the smell of the boiled eggs and the vinegar...good stuff!

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  30. We do the whole thing! Dying, hiding and everything. We also hide elaborate baskets with a mini-Christmas worth of gifts for the kids and eat lots of candy and a yummy brunch. Yay! Happy Easter everyone.

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  31. I'm a godless heathen who oddly enough loves angels, saints and the Virgin Mary, even though I don't believe in them. And eggs. I celebrate Easter every for breakfast.

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  32. I decorate eggs for Easter and as Christmas ornaments. I like to do 'em up fancy - painting them with designs, glued on glitter, etc. They are a beautiful shape, and they make a great canvas.

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  33. @Sue Ellen Mishkey - My grandmother was Ukrainian/Russian and I have never been able to perfect her holopchi as good as she and her sister could. :(

    I haven't really celebrated Easter much as an adult, but as a kid, I did the egg hunts, got the chocolate bunnies and all the church events that went along with the holiday. Mom would always cook a big meal and have the family over.

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  34. Before one of my best friends moved to the East coast a few years ago there was a tradition that on the Saturday night before Easter we would all go to her parent's house (I was in my 30's and her and her brothers were in their 40's - no children at all) and order pizza, play poker and dye eggs. We had prizes for the best eggs: Prettiest, most creative design, brightest color, ugliest, and the all time favorite - most revolting. The most revolting ones were usually the eggs that had kind of exploded during the boiling process. Yep all of the eggs were dyed. That was more fun than dying eggs as a kid because my mom was a huge neat freak and only allowed certain things.

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