Easter is a celebration that all Catholics are united in. Even though all Catholics celebrate Easter, how it is celebrated in Virginia is a little different than how it is celebrated in England. Some of our MODG students have shared their Easter traditions, either from family traditions or cultural ones.

Peter Sica: We typically go to the Easter Vigil, or to the Solemn High Mass on Easter Sunday. For food, we typically make several Easter Breads. Usually Ukrainian Bread, Italian Bread, and another bread whose nationality I don’t know. We make a sweet cheese that goes with the bread (I believe it is Slovak in origin). So yeah, for cuisine it’s a mix of cultures and nationalities. We typically have a big Easter Breakfast, with the breads, the cheese, kielbasa, eggs, scallions. Obviously we have the food, Blessed, usually after Mass. We also do the egg coloring, as well as an Easter egg hunt, but the coloring of the eggs takes place on Easter Saturday. Also, since my mom insists, we do tend to sing Easter Hymns and songs, usually in between our large breakfast, and our large dinner (which isn’t as large as the breakfast).

Olivia Schlater: Going to the Easter vigil of course, and also getting together with all our extended family to celebrate on Easter : ) My favorite Easter tradition is probably something we started during covid. We light a bonfire Thursday night and keep it burning until 3 on Friday to symbolize “staying awake” with Jesus, then we relight it on Sunday.

Philip Roberts: My family’s biggest Easter tradition is egg pocking, which is a Cajun tradition in which two people, on Easter Sunday, each take one hardboiled egg and tap the eggs against each other. (The loser of the round is the one whose egg cracks.) It’s always enjoyable to dye the Easter eggs then absolutely obliterate them with the egg pocking.

Thomas Leahy: Obviously there’s a big thing to do with lambs, eggs and coneys (rabbits). They all have origins to do with fertility stuff and Springtime but they are Christianised with the Resurrection, etc. Roast lamb and salad (with potatoes of course) is something we always have for Easter Sunday lunch, (may or may not be related to the Passover meal I dunno) and then chocolate eggs, normal eggs and decorated eggs are important because people traditionally fasted from eggs during Lent. We tend to paint our own decorated eggs, which I think they do in Eastern Europe as well. My grandfather and his siblings always used to have egg eating competitions on Sunday morning but I’m not sure that counts.

In Britain there are lots of traditional sports and things which get down around Easter, hunting and such. In Wokington in Cumberland (up north-west) there is a mass football game they play at Easter called “Uppies and Downies” following mediaeval rules (with the full contact, loads of players on either team, injuries, etc.) It’s played over a stretch a little over a mile long between the village and the harbour on the coast, hence the “uppies and downies”.