My Easter traditions growing up were a mix of religious and secular. I was born into a religious tradition comparable to Baptists.  It was Protestant, somewhere between casually and formally structured and trying very hard to create an extended family for its prized members.  Easter in this setting consisted of Biblical and secular celebrations.  Every year from one to ten I got a new Easter dress, smothered in bright flowers and its fair share of lace.  My sister and I had fraternal baskets, identifiable only in that mine was pink and hers was purple.  These were used for the annual children's Easter egg hunt on the church's front lawn.  Plastic eggs were filled with candy, egg shaped jello molds were waiting beside marshmallows and juice boxes in the fellowship hall.  At home, on some just-out-of-reach shelf waited two chocolate bunnies from grandma. 

Easter was preceded by lent, services at fellow churches that built up the story of Jesus' death and resurrection, the reason we celebrated.  Good Friday was a random day off from school.  Easter Sunday was the earliest day of the year, as the entire family slugged their way out of bed before the moon seemed to have had a chance to rise in order to drive to the church cemetery and greet the sun in celebration of Jesus' rising. 

I endured this for so many years because the best part came at the free buffet style breakfast afterwards.  Southern church-goers know how to fellowship; in other words, they know how to eat.  Later that day, a Church service in which the militantly beaten Easter hymns are intoned to remind us that "Christ the Lord is risen today."  Usually, we'd leave church and head straight over the grandma's house for a cook-out lunch with more chocolate, jelly beans and stuffed bunnies than we knew what to do with.  And of course, another Easter egg hunt.  Grandma had the best yard for hiding the little plastic eggs.  It would be no surprise to find a pink one in a random spot some time in the middle of August.

Easter was both religious and commercial in my childhood.  We contributed profits of the manufacturers by purchasing our fair share of colorful plastic and specially shaped chocolates; and we justified it by submitting to the repetitive traditions of our southern church family.  The only custom I have held onto is that hollow chocolate bunny that I love so much.  And, in a quiet moment of those Sundays, I can hear the echo of one or two of those hymns, in the beautiful out of tune I'll always remember.