Atheists Celebrating Easter? What the Hell!

A couple weeks ago I wrote this post about what makes for good Easter basket gifts for toddlers and infants. After my post, I sat down and really thought about why it is that we even celebrate Easter. Many people know that we are atheist, and if you don’t… well… you do now. So why the hell would a bunch of atheists be celebrating Easter anyway? Well, in this post, I’ll dive into what Easter means to my family as well as our many Easter traditions.

Let’s Start With What This Post Is NOT About:

As you all can see from this picture of me when I was younger, I’ve never really been a fan of religion, haha! But, I did give it a solid try multiple times, so I’m going to come right out and say that this post is not somewhere where we are going to debate beliefs. Please do not email, private message, comment, etc. if you simply want to tell me how wrong I am. We aren’t going there. If you want to believe in the bible stories, go for it, but we simply don’t. Please don’t push your beliefs onto us. We are firm on our stance. We are atheists and will not be spending time justifying or defending this. Thank you in advance for understanding! Now, onto the real reason you’re here: the why and how.

Why Do You Celebrate Then If You’re Atheists?

Reason #1: My husband and I grew up with Christian traditions

Let me start out by saying that both my husband and I come from homes where Christianity was the religion taught, as you can see in the picture I posted above. So, we both grew up with Easter. We did the baskets and the egg hunts. It was fun for us growing up. I think that’s one of the reasons we do Easter honestly. It’s what we’re used to doing and what we grew up with. I know this is a lame reason, but it is what it is. It just never really occurred to us not to do it, but there are a few other more important reasons as well.

Reason #2: We don’t want our son to feel left out

Because the majority of the kids in our area come from Christian families, we don’t want our kiddo to feel left out when other kids at school are bragging about what the Easter Bunny brought them. It’s as simple as that. Kids can also be cruel sometimes. If they find out we don’t celebrate Easter, I don’t want my child being called a weirdo or other names. I also think that it gives him something fun to look forward to. I don’t think that you have to be religious to participate in the fun activities of Easter that really don’t have much to do with Christianity anyway. This leads me to the next reason we celebrate.

Reason #3: Easter is more of a springtime celebration for us

This is probably the most important reason to me. Even though I was taught about the Christian aspects of the holiday, the focus in my family was always more on the egg hunts, the dying Easter eggs, and the damn bunny. But what the hell does the Easter Bunny, baby chicks, Peeps, eggs, flowers, and all this other crap have to do with any of that religious stuff? Spring is when we think of all of these things! Birds chirping, chicks hatching, baby bunnies, eggs, etc. are all symbols of springtime. They were also symbols of fertility. (Fun fact: Did you know that Easter actually started off as a pagan fertility festival during the spring equinox to celebrate new life?) To me, Easter has ALWAYS been more of a celebration of Springtime and all of the new life, whether flowers blooming (and setting off my damn allergies) or baby bunnies being born. This is what we will be celebrating with our son.

What Traditions Do Atheists Have For Easter?

Now, obviously I don’t speak for all atheists, but there are quite a few traditions our family does for Easter celebrations. There are also some obvious things we don’t do too, like obviously we don’t attend Easter mass or anything. That being said, maybe you’ll pick up a few new traditions that you want to try with your own family too.

Tradition #1: Easter basket

Like I mentioned above, I wrote a post a couple weeks ago about some great ideas you could use for Easter basket stuffers for toddlers and infants. This is probably my favorite tradition. I love assembling the Easter basket and seeing the look on our kiddo’s face when he gets a bunch of cool new stuff. Also, typically we use the Easter basket to buy necessity items that we need for spring and summer like sunscreen, outdoor toys, swimsuits, etc. It’s nice to have a holiday in the middle of the year to get things my son needs before his birthday. Some things we obviously don’t buy are chocolate crosses or biblical stuff.

Tradition #2: Easter egg hunt

We like having an Easter egg hunt like most other families. We typically fill most of the eggs with little snacks like Annie’s crackers (these Neapolitan ones are BOMB), melts, or other bite sized treats like these Scooby Doo cinnamon graham crackers. When kiddo’s a bit older, we’ll probably put small toys in them like Hot Wheels or Legos instead. One thing we do too though is hide a few golden eggs with money for his piggy bank. This year, we’re splitting $5 between 5-10 golden eggs. We’ll hide them in the backyard if the weather is nice, or inside if it’s raining. He had such a blast last year. It was funny to see his reaction because last Easter was his first time feeling grass.

Tradition #3: Dying Easter eggs

So these three traditions are probably the most common that everyone does. It’s always fun though to dye Easter eggs the night before Easter. There are a lot of reasons we do this, but mainly because we all participate as a family. There are a lot of great family memories to be made while dying eggs. It also promotes creativity in all of us! Plus, our son is VERY interested in learning about colors right now, so this will be perfect for this year. These are the ones we did last year.

Tradition #4: Easter crafts the week before

In addition to dying Easter eggs, I usually do arts and crafts during the week leading up to the holiday. This bunny painting is one of my favorite crafts that my kiddo helped me make! I cut out a silhouette of a bunny, taped it down, put paint all over the canvas, covered it in saran wrap and then let him smash around on it. After it dried, I peeled off the silhouette and painted an outline around the blank space. It was so fun and turned out so pretty! These are the supplies we used:

• Canvas, we used 8×10 like these ones.
• Pink, yellow, blue, and purple acrylic non-toxic paint like the ones in this set.
• Black paint pen, like these sharpie ones.
• Printer paper to print and cut out the silhouette of the rabbit, duckling, easter egg or any other shape you like!
• Saran wrap

This year, we’re going to do some coloring pages, make some Easter treats, make these scrunch tissue Easter eggs from Childcareland, and do this activity that uses peeps for painting from Passion for Savings.

Tradition #5: Egg salad sandwiches and a picnic (weather permitting)

With all of the darn hard boiled eggs, you gotta find a way to use them up, right? So, for lunch on Easter after our egg hunt, we usually have a little picnic with egg salad sandwiches, fruit, chips, etc. Last year we had to go in because it was too hot and we were getting dive bombed by wasps. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t do bugs. At all. Ever. Haha! Thankfully we have Orkin servicing our house now so we should hopefully be able to sit outside and enjoy the day while we eat this year!

This is also the only real food tradition that we have. I’m not really all that fond of ham unless it’s in something like ham and scalloped potatoes (see my recipe here). That being said, for Easter dinner, we typically make something using Springtime produce. Pasta primavera is a good one, or this year, we’re having a chicken tortellini pasta.

And that’s basically it! I’m sure as our toddler gets older, we’ll create more traditions, but for right now, this is how and why we celebrate Easter as atheists. If you want to hear more about our parenting ideas, be sure to check out my Parenting Ideas page or subscribe below for weekly updates. What fun traditions does your family have? Leave a comment to let me know! Thanks everyone and happy (almost) Easter!