Easter 2003

Sunday, May 4, 2003

In many regards, Easter in Sweden seems to be a lot like Easter at home. Well, perhaps not for us -- at home, I usually spend most of my Easter weekend at church singing or running the sound board or moving various equipment or something, whereas here I didn't have to do any of that stuff. But apart from that, it seems to be rather similar.

One notable difference is that in Sweden they have vacation over Easter. Good Friday and Easter Monday are both holidays, so it's a four-day weekend. That didn't exactly apply to us though, as I don't get as much holiday/vacation time as the Swedes, so I worked from home so I can have some time off later.

Of course an "important" part of celebrating Easter is finding eggs and eating candy. In Sweden you can buy empty cardboard eggs -- usually around 4-5 inches in diameter, although you can get them in all sorts of sizes -- which are decorated with chickens and rabbits and things, and then fill them with candy from the candy store. Each person gets their own egg, and that is what gets hidden and found. Coloring eggs doesn't seem to be as popular here as at home, although I did hear of people painting them. It is also common to eat eggs for Easter. (We had omelets for breakfast and ham for dinner.)

But the real point of Easter is to celebrate Jesus' resurrection. Many churches have services on Good Friday in addition to Easter Sunday, and some apparently have services on Saturday and Easter Monday as well. The church we go to only had a service on Sunday, and they held it in a different location than usual -- we didn't know that it was moved, so we weren't able to actually attend the service. So I can't actually say anything about that. But we enjoyed a relaxing Easter weekend, with nice weather outside (much better than the snow from the weekend before).