I always got one of those paddles with the pink ball attached with an elastic string. Loved those! And a egg of silly putty - then I peeled up the Sunday comics with it :)

OMG! That was how My Kids spend Easter.

My Childhood Easters were very different. My Mom took us to Sears and I always got a hat, white gloves, white patent leather shoes, new lace socks, and a new frilly dress. My Brother got a new Seersucker Suit. LOL! How Southern can you get?

Darned in our new attire, we went to Church. Then to Grandmas House and changed into our Play Clothes for the Easter Hunt. No toys!

Gayle

My mom always made that bunny cake (2 round cake pans-1 you cut up into ears and a bowtie) decorate with jelly beans. Think I'll make it this year for DD.

Colored hard boiled eggs, did an egg hunt, usually inside, and read Sally Forth comic about the mom eating the DD's chocolate bunny ears every year!

Me throwing a full blown fit being forced to wear a puffy organdy dress with a foo-foo petticoat.

Going to my grandparent's house and seeing my cousins. We always got a large hollow egg with a trinket inside.My grandma would also bake little individual "Kulich" for us kids.

Watching my dad making cheese paska with a food mill while my mom coached him not to forget to use ALL the egg yolks.

We never got baskets but I think I would get a gift. I started getting baskets when I went to school and heard about them from other kids.

We always got comics and a couple of outside toys, couple of easter edibles - and always in these waxed brown paper bags - not sure what the significance of those was. I was thinking about Easter the other day and realized as a kid I don't remember ever having an Easter egg hunt...went to church some with my brother, the parents never went to church. Had some of those palm crosses for years as bookmarks and bible markers.
Always had a big dinner.
Suzan J

KFC! We always had KFC on Easter for some reason. My dad would pick it up and bring it home. It was a real treat since we didn't eat out/get take out very often (except for pizza on Fridays).

My cousins and I always picked flowers at our grandparents' farm on the Saturday afternoon before Easter. Mommie (my grandmother) had a large old-fashioned flowerbed covered yard and then a front pasture thick with bluebonnets, Indian paintbrushes, yellow daisies and other wildflowers. We used these flowers to make our Easter nests - artfully arranged, nest shaped constructions in a flat grocery store box. We took these home and set them in our living rooms to await the Easter Rabbit's overnight visit.

Easter morning, I would awaken to find dyed Easter eggs, candy eggs, other Easter candy and a small toy or two - like the paddle ball someone mentioned earlier or a plastic chicken that layed eggs or something.

Then we would go to Mass (gloves, hat and new dress) and have dinner with family. Actually, I can't remember if we had dinner at home with the relatives invited or if it was at one grandparents' or the other... But I am sure we visited both grandparents' houses on Easter Sunday, and so I got to see cousins from both sides. My grandmothers gave us dyed eggs and candy. I don't particularly remember Easter egg hunts, but I am sure the cousins and I hid our eggs for each other over and over again.

At least on some years, we would have a 'real' Easter egg hunt at church on the Saturday before.
Wanda in South Texas

Here is a link that might be useful: The Bee Hive

one easter, dad decided to drive to palm springs... we had on the usual easter wear...and about froze to death! then it took hours to drive home...that's when he decided to get a automatic car, and we checked the weather before making impulsive drives! lol...

I grew up in Washington, DC, so we went to the White House Egg Roll. Mostly what I remember about that was the throngs of kids and grown ups!

We usually (not always) had new clothes. We each had an Easter basket with chocolate rabbits and jelly beans. My favorite bunny was the one that was made out of a cardboard type material; he stood on his back legs and had a basket on his back to hold candies. I remember ny DF showing us how to dye eggs with a twirled look. He would drop specks of different colors of oil paint on top of the water in a bowl, Then he stirred them around a little, blew the paint away from the top of the water and dipped the egg as he twirled it around. Magic!

We had "egg fights" and tried to keep from breaking our egg while doing damage to the opponent's egg.

Times were rough. I remember going with my DM on Monday after Easter Sunday to Murphy's Dime Store where all the Easter candy was marked down really low. We could get a lot more for our money that way!

Oh, to be young again!

Sue

We kids were quite allergic to eggs, so one year mom spent the months before Easter blowing the egg contents out of a hole chipped into one end of the egg with a tiny blow hole on the other. She dyed the empty shells, and we had our Easter egg hunt with these eggs. Plastic eggs were not available in stores then. We also got a sugar egg with a scene inside, a chocolate egg and some jelly beans. No toys. Those were for birthdays and Christmas.

Easter Sunday meant new church dresses, usually made of dotted Swiss, a hat and white gloves. It was still cold quite often, so our pretty dresses were often covered with a spring jacket or even our winter long coats.

During the Easter shopping season, the local variety store had ducklings in the window. Often a sibling would buy one or win one in a contest. We kept it in the basement in a cozy box when it was little, and eventually Dad would give it away to a local farmer when it was big and needed more space.

Could I have been stupid-er???? I was seven and went to church with my two older sisters. We attended this church somewhat regularly on Sundays but didn't participate otherwise. The lady at the mic called for all the children in my age group to stand up and recite their Easter poetry. I was a good little writer and could usually think of something quick but when my turn came, absolutely nothing came to mind. I had no business standing up since I didn't have anything prepared. Was just following the first directive and got lost on the second one.

I remember the bat-n-ball that always came in the Easter baskets. But, my favorite Easter memories of those of my sister bringing my daughter her Easter baskets every year. My sister made the biggest and best baskets, and way better than anything that could be bought. She did it for all the kids in the family, and they looked forward to them each year. I remember my grand nephew crying the year he turned too old to receive one. He was 15 years old and cried like a baby. "What do you mean K-K isn't going to bring me a basket?!" We laughed so hard and reminded him of the cutoff age. He was still disappointed.

I always got a complete new Easter outfit right up from the shoes to a new hat.
Of course church was a big part of the celebrations,and I actually looked forward to seeing everyone decked out in their new Easter clothes.(Not the reason I should have wanted to go to church I'm sure).LOL
Mom and my grandmother would prepare food days ahead,and we always had the traditional boiled eggs in the morning.
There wern't many chocolate eggs back in those days,and I remember when I was about 8 getting my frirst chocolate egg in a pretty egg cup shaped like a chicken.

We always got new Mary jane patent leather shoes,new white socks,the older girls got new dresses the younger of us got the handmedowns(didnt matter(new to us).We also got our hair set with rags on saturday night and got to wear our hair down to church on Sunday.Mine never held a curl,still doesn't.Then after church we had an easter egg hunt,then dinner.later our cousins would come up and we spent the day playing.

We never got individual baskets,there was a big family basket on the dining room table.

We didn't have much,but we had LOVE.We were a family of 12 kids,and i was # 10.
Kathi

I always loved Easter ... and Spring flowers! It was a tradition at our church for the little kids to bring in flower to decorate a cross with. I must have been about 5, and I had the most beautiful blue iris from our yard. The 'beard' in the middle of the flower was so soft I just had to keep petting it .. and it broke! I felt so sorry for it, so I tried to reassemble it before taking it up. Didn't work, so I think I ended up kind of smooshing all the pieces in between a group of other flowers, so at least all the pretty petals were in one place.

Dyeing easter eggs was fun. A cup of water, a teaspoon of vinegar, a few drops of food color. We'd use a white crayon to make designs before dyeing them. And we'd hold the egg half in one color, half in another. Mom always made us do this outside ... lol!

We always dyed eggs. I loved it!

The "Easter Bunny" would give us each a big Easter basket filled with assorted candies. Me, having a sweet tooth, loved it.

Easter for my children is a bit different. My MIL is big on Easter egg hunts, and she always buys way more candy than necessary, so I don't give the kids a basket. I don't want them having any more sugar! We have all the extended family to our house for dinner. We have an Easter egg hunt, too.

Sheryl

Lots of memories. We would all have new clothes. For us girls, that meant a new dress, shoes and gloves. We would get our picture taken before church. We would die eggs which the Easter Bunny would hide overnight for us to find. We would each get a chocolate bunny, egg, or chicken; and we would get a toy. The toy might be a yo yo, a pinwheel, a paddle ball, or those cones that pop a ball in the air, and you catch it. And we would always have a big dinner after church.