Let's Celebrate!

The children are busy celebrating Easter today! I like to keep up with my traditions, but I have to say the big holidays back home lose their meaning here, and I'm not sure I need to encourage my kids to eat any more chocolate! Rurutu don't really celebrate Easter, despite being devout Protestants. So we have the odd Easter Egg at the store, but only popa'a (white people) like me, buy them.

The big problem is that it's not actually springtime, we're in the southern hemisphere so it's autumn, celebrating spring flowers and bunnies makes no sense (we don't even have rabbits, though we have a fair few feral chickens and chicks, year 'round)! Though, there was rather a nice show of irises on Good Friday.

Anyway, why let that stop us, I outdid myself, thanks to internet, with printout easter baskets and origami rabbits. I even spray painted some eggs. Of course, today it's pouring with rain, so the indoor egg-hunt went rather quickly! But nevertheless, the kids, and particularly Amaiterai, LOVED it; so that's definitely to celebrate. I'd happily celebrate the end of the cyclone season, though we aren't quite there yet.

Or maybe next year we'll try celebrating Holi, the ancient Hindu Festival of Colours - I'm not Hindu, but the idea of it seems worth celebrating to me. Like Easter, Holi is celebrated around the vernal equinox, though normally slightly earlier.  It is a festival that celebrates the victory of light over dark, the arrival of spring and end of winter. It is a time to visit friends and family, forgive and forget, and repair broken relationships. And get very messy. Note to self, not to be done on grandma's terrace!