“How Easter is Different in Australia”

• We don’t color eggs here. In fact, in Australia (and in the UK), “easter egg” refers to a giant chocolate egg usually the size of a football. These kick ass. Granted, you don’t get as many as you do of the hard-boiled ones in the US, but who really eats the hard-boiled ones anyway?
• Bunnies are used in advertising here, but no little kids actually believe a giant bunny will bring you chocolate. You can’t get your picture taken with one in a mall, either. Which is nice, because the Easter Bunny scared the crap out of me as a child.
• Actually, rabbits are a plague in Australia and some folks think they shouldn’t be glamourized at all. That’s why there’s a movement to replace the Easter Bunny with the Easter Bilby, which is a weird native marsupial that kinda looks like a rabbit. As long as it’s chocolate, I’m in favor.
• Everyone here eats hot cross buns for Easter. These are fresh-baked rolls with orange peel and raisin in them, and they have a little white cross of dough on the top. They’re glazed with yummy sugariness too. This is a tradition I think we need to revive in America.
• Though I can’t stand the eggs themselves, I used to love the Cadbury’s Cream Egg commercial in the US with the bunny that clucks like a chicken. You don’t get that here or in the UK. However, you can get the actually eggs pretty much year round outside America. They’re not so much exclusively tied to Easter here.
• About this time every year in Australia you get the “Royal Easter Show”, which is basically the state fair. Yep, Easter is in the Fall here, so that’s when everybody rolls out their prize pumpkins and sheep and stuff. I haven’t been yet, but I’m hoping to make it out this weekend. They’ve got lumberjack competitions! And high-diving pigs! How could we not?
• The very best thing about Easter Down Under: No Peeps! Praise Baby Jesus.

Australians are actually having an extra-special Easter this year, given how late it falls on the calendar. Next Friday is “Anzac Day”, which is a Memorial Day for the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. (Hence, ANZAC.) It’s a big public holiday. So starting tomorrow with Good Friday, we have four days off work, then three days on, then another three-day weekend off. Hallelujah!