Easter & ANZAC Day

Hello from down under,

We just finished the Easter Holiday, and I do mean holiday! Aussies have told me that they take their holidays seriously and they are right. They normally get 4 days off for Easter but this year it coincided with ANZAC Day, so it was a 5 day weekend. When I talk to Aussies about Easter, I explained to them that I felt like Easter had lost some of it's importance over the years and that it was not as big of a deal in the US. In fact, I haven't had a long weekend off for Easter in years. Good Friday was still a work day for me unless I took it off or unless the governor decided to let all the state employees go home early. Not even all the kids have Friday off, many of them still had school because it was a bad weather make up day. Not so in Oz. Aussies would tell me that they love their holidays and if anyone tried to take away a day of it that they would not put up with it and throw a fit. It made me think...well, Americans like our holidays too! However we have lost a lot of our holidays over the years. I remember when I was in elementary school that we would get to have a day off school just to go to the Texas State Fair and Stock Show. We eventually lost that day, and we used to always have a 3 day Easter weekend and now it just iffy. In fact, my mother said they used to have Easter Monday off as well but not anymore. I guess the Easter thing has to do with religion and the government tries to stay out of the religious holiday controversy that non-Christians have brought us....which honestly I don't get...I mean I would be happy to get a day off school or work for a Jewish Holiday or Ramadan or whatever...I will not argue with a day off! Anyway...I digress...

So, Easter here in Australia...The holiday goes from Good Friday to Easter Monday. Now, when I say Good Friday is a holiday, I mean it is like Christmas. This is not a day to go shopping and finish your meal plans for Sunday, this is a day of time with your family. Almost every store and business is closed, in fact McDonalds and 7-11 were the only places that we knew were open on that day. Then Saturday, the stores opened up but stores here aren't open all day on Saturday, most close at 4:00 p.m. Sunday everything was closed (and it should be) and then Monday places seemed to open around noon but I am not sure all of them opened.

In going shopping before Easter, I noticed a few things. First, it is hard to find Easter baskets. I only saw one store that sold Easter baskets and they only had a few and were very girly, so Landry ended up with a Toy Story metal old fashioned lunch box for his basket. Also, I never saw Easter egg dye and I asked my Aussie friend and she said it is not really very common to die eggs. She said you can find die at the craft store and such but it just isn't done here very much. It seems that their Easters all centered around chocolate, because at KMart, that was pretty much what all their Easter stuff was, chocolate. Not that I minded chocolate, I was just surprised that there was not more variety. To me, it seemed like Easter was more about the actual religious event and church type activities than bunnies and chicks...so good for them for that!

Tuesday was ANZAC Day, which is a memorial day for those Australia and New Zealand military who fought in World War I, it is the anniversary of their first battle. ANZAC stands for Australia New Zealand Air Corps. Tuesday seemed to be a shopping and sale kind of day plus there is a sunrise 4:45 a.m. service honoring ANZAC Day. ANZAC Day is the only day that you can play 2-up legally. 2-up is a gambling game that is illegal all other days of the year except ANZAC Day. It was explained to me this way: You have a stick that you place 2 old pennies on (Aussies don't use pennies anymore, everything is rounded up or down to the 5 cent piece) and then you toss the pennies in the air and people bet on whether it will be both heads, both tails, or split. Evidently everyone goes to the bar and plays this while they drink...a lot.

It was a nice holiday, although we missed being with our family back in the states. A few days before Easter, we went to Sydney for the annual Aggie Muster celebration and got to spend time with some Aggies and eat brisket and cole slaw and all sorts of good old American food, so that was a nice taste of home.

Our little family was planning on having a nice quiet Easter. We were going to make Texas Fajitas and were excited for some good Tex-Mex food. However, when we were at church, we found that four of our missionaries did not have a place to eat for the holiday, so we invited them to come with us. I told them it would be nothing traditional since we were having fajitas, but since one was from California and one from Arizona, they were thrilled that they were getting Mexican food! We also had a British and Chinese young man with us too and the British one said that he loved Mexican food and the Chinese one had never had Mexican food, although three helpings later, he was a fan. It was really a fun way to spend our Easter and I am so glad they came over.

I hope you all had a Happy Easter too!

Heather