5. Easter Presents

Chocolate eggs are given to children. The eggs are either hollow or have a filling, and are usually covered with brightly coloured silver paper.

Small chocolate eggs are hidden for the children to find on the traditional Easter Egg Hunt.

Around 80 million chocolate eggs are eaten each year in Britain.

All kinds of fun are had with the hard-boiled decorated pace eggs.

Decorating and colouring eggs for Easter was a common custom in England in the middle ages. Eggs were brightly coloured to mimic the new, fresh colours of spring. The practice of decorating eggs was made even more famous by King Edward I of England who ordered 450 eggs to be gold-leafed and coloured for Easter gifts in 1290.

Egg rolling is the most popular and is an Easter Monday sport.Hard-boiled eggs are rolled down a hill. Customs differ from place to place. The winner's egg may be the one that rolls the farthest, survives the most rolls, or is rolled between two pegs.

Another activity that happens is the playing of a game with the eggs known as «jarping», which is rather like conkers. Each person holds a pace egg firmly in his hand and knocks it against his opponent's to see which is the strongest and which egg can score the most victims.

Easter cards arrived in Victorian England, when a stationer added a greeting to a drawing of a rabbit. The cards proved popular.

By Mary Brandolino

I was just a little thing

When they brought me from the store

And they put me on the floor

In my cage.

They would take me out to play

Love and pet me all the time

Then at day's end I would climb

In my cage.

But as days and weeks went by

I saw less of them it seemed

Of their loving touch I dreamed

In my cage.

In the night outside their house

I felt sad and so neglected

Often scared and unprotected

In my cage.

In the dry or rainy weather

Sometimes hotter sometimes colder

I just sat there growing older

In my cage.