Pass the Eggs please!

So here we are, Easter has rolled around once again.  We have as usual received the customary greeting from Our Charismatic Greek Chairman, wishing us all a Happy Easter and reminiscing about his childhood.  All very pleasant, but somewhat undermined by the mail received the same day from our Less Than Charismatic CEO with his thoughts on our slightly disappointing first Quarter results and subsequent dip in the share price (now there is an unforgivable sin.....worse than the Crucifixion of Our Lord....).   It was of course everybody's fault but his.....Sales not performing well enough, Development not good enough, Engagements not doing their sums properly and as for Services - well, forget it!    The fact that we are all locked into a way of working largely defined by him, a number-cruncher with no real knowledge of what the rest of us do every day (and the struggles we all face in consequence of his brainwaves).  Of course, the situation has no doubt killed any lingering but faint possibility that we may actually get a bonus for last year's graft, but still......I never anticipated anything anyway - been around the block too many times to expect fair play.

Anyway, I couldn't give a toss about him.

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When I was a kid, and when my first family back home were kids, in England, Easter basically meant loads and loads of chocolate eggs, sufficient to make you sick, and later much beer.  It meant Morecombe & Wise re-runs on the BBC and the usual selection of game-show special editions and old movies - a poor man's Christmas in fact.  It meant at least two football matches, on either Good Friday or the Saturday and on Easter Monday.  As players in local leagues, trying to catch up a fixture backlog from the winter we never got to watch the big games (unless injured or suspended of course), and as I played for a couple of clubs - one from a Saturday league and another a Sunday league) I sometimes played all four days.  Happy days.  The religious basis for the entire weekend lost focus as I got older, from my teenage years I guess, until we had the boys.  My first wife was Catholic so Mass on Good Friday and Easter Sunday was a must (and indeed the weeks of Lent leading up to it), and in later years, when my Second Son was about 10 and managed get us both on the reading roster, we participated a couple of times in the Masses.  But overall, Easter was a fun time and a greedy time.

In Poland, it's diifferent.  The country is much more devout than England of course, so the weekend means much more and is less commercialised.  There are fewer chocolate eggs, for a start, so my digestion has improved no end.  Instead, we hard boil a load of eggs and when cooled hand-paint them.  The eggs (as a symbol of new life) are then placed in decorated baskets, together with bread and meat (for a wealthy year), salt and pepper (the symbol for house and family preservation) and little ram figure to symbolise the Resurrection, and then taken to the local church for blessing.  There are regular sessions throughout the Saturday, and it's lovely time as families and kids from all over town or village or neighbourhood gather for the blessings.  The food is then used as a major part of the Easter Sunday breakfast.  Then Easter Monday (always a bit of a non-event in England) is celebrated as Wet Monday - where kids countrywide get water pistols, hose-pipes and God know's what else to give everyone a good soaking.  The fun starts at breakfast time - a few years ago we stayed at my in-laws and I was ambushed by their kids when I got out of bed to visit the loo.....I was drenched in a crossfire from about four SuperSoakers.  It was brilliant.

I'm sure other countries and cultures have their customs and traditions....I'd be interested to hear from any of you readers what they are!

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In the meantime, let me wish you all Happy Easter wherever you are and however you celebrate it.