Did you have Easter bonnets in the U. S? It is really common for schools and such to have an Easter bonnet parade, essentially everyone makes an Easter hat with chicks eggs or even spring flowers and the best one wins
When I was younger it was dyeing Easter eggs and 'painting' them in some way to show at the local pub in a competition on the Easter Saturday. It seems to have died out here now. Boiling the eggs with onion skins in the water was one way I remember of dyeing the eggs.
My easter tradition is having lamb, roast potatoes, mash potatoes ,courgette, roasted carrot and roasted parsnip with honey poured over them roasted in oven until brown Yorkshire pudding ,gavy and for pudding is hot cross bun toasted
As a child in Scotland 40 or 50 years ago we used to paint eggs, (whatever colour they are you can still paint them and we certainly didn't have kits!) and we would roll them down a hill to break them. I hadn't heard of the Easter egg hunt thing at that age nor the Easter bunny. More UK customs lost to US traditions. :(
My mother used to blow out the content of a raw egg, so only the complete shell was left and decorate them ornately and give us those when we were teens. As younger kids Scotland in the seventies and eighties, we used to roll painted or coloured - in boiled eggs. I think the hunts tend to be more commercial (like tourist attractions will do it), or maybe community activities. I never see kids rolling eggs now. I think it was sort of a mixture of Christian and pagan, it's a shame it died out. I remember my Gran making an Easter bonnet for a competition at the sheltered housing
It must be a Scottish thing, I was going to make the same comment about painting hard boiled eggs and rolling them down the hill in Forres. Though was also told this also linked to rolling witches down the hill in the dark ages in barrels with spikes inside. Though that might have been the teacher / adult scaring us 😂😂
The acronym PEEP is also a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan for people with mobility issues who might not be able to use fire exit routes without assistance or adaptation
In the 1970s, us kids took hard boiled eggs to school to paint them in class at easter. The best one won a prize, usually a chocolate easter egg. The one that won was probably ALWAYS the teacher's favourite 😂
When I was a kid, hot cross buns were only available on Good Friday morning. They would be pre-ordered from the baker and one of us would go to collect them freshly baked early in the morning. Easter Sunday we had boiled eggs on which our father would have drawn detailed faces.
In the uk, we have advanced in the Easter front. Egg dyeing went out in the 70’s. We also have very intelligent kids in the uk so they know there is no Easter bunny. We know that parents and other family members give us the eggs or money. In the 70’s we used to be able to buy a nursery rhyme mug which had a large hollow chocolate egg in. I still have a mug that I have had since I was about 5 that I was given at Easter, it has the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill on it.
I'm from the UK and I have dyed eggs with my granny when I was a kid. I believe we covered the eggs with real flowers, then wrapped them in some kind of cloth. Then boiled them in a pan. When they come out the colour from the flowers have printed on the eggs in the flower shapes.... something like that
About 10 years ago while visiting my grandchildren in America I came up with a little idea. I brought from England a packet of Rainbow drops (coloured puffed rice) I told my grandchildren they were magic seeds, we scattered them in the garden the night before Easter, when the children were asleep I 'planted' dozens of lollipops in the garden. The next day the children where soooooo excited to see the seeds had grown magically into lollipops it was fantastic. My daughter has carried on this, it has become a tradition and now I am very pleased to see that the word has spread and it is becoming an actual thing that people are doing and saw a tic tok about it recently.
Ma'am, please don't feel unduly challenged by the idea of new words and aphorisms to add to your lexicon as you move from country to country. When my family and I moved for six years, to Virginia, back in the 90s, we were equally bamboozled at first by novel words such as: diaper, whippersnapper, kitsch, beltway, faucet, and vacation (which my then 10-year old son thought was a polite way of saying one needed to go to the toilet to defecate!)
Easter was originally a pagan spring festival and Christmas was the midwinter celebration. These were combined with the Christian celebrations when the populations in Europe converted to christianity. The tradition of painting and eating eggs also goes back a long way to these times.
We used to decorate boiled eggs with felt tip pens when I was in Sunday School (a long time ago|). I remember the colours used to migrate through the shell and colour the egg underneath - it didn't look very healthy.
Happy Easter ‼️ dying eggs is over 2,000 years old ,we do it here in Ireland ,I did it yesterday with my Grandkids , and we do Easter baskets too ,today after dinner we will do an Easter egg hunt , but they'll be chocolate eggs ,the little ones ,and then the adults will swap Easter baskets /Easter eggs , lamb is the traditional Easter dinner served with all the trimmings .
Ref Schools the Easter Holiday is between the spring and summer terms not a half term. The British school year has three terms, Autumn Term, Spring term and Summer term.
I didn’t have the Easter bunny growing up in the U.K. Altho I do it for my children now. We have a Easter hunt around the village and meet the Easter bunny 🐰 And in the morning the Easter bunny hides chocolate in the garden it’s similar reaction to Santa. The school will have the vicar or Sunday school teacher come and do a assembly on Easter and why we celebrate it. Last year we celebrated with friends from Bulgaria and they said traditionally they dip dye eggs and the throw them, the winner is the egg that survives. We made eggs with them but the kids didn’t want to break them after.
No doubt mentioned before but the school Easter hols are main holidays. Half term holidays are shorter and in-between the main holidays of Christmas, Easter and Summer. Nevertheless an interesting vid. Thanks!
Actually Easter is a full end of term break in schools. The British school year is divided into three terms, September to December, January to Easter (which may be March or April), and April to July. Each of those terms have a week long half term break, usually late October, late February and early June.
Just a couple of things to add to your usual, excellent take on British/US differences. The school Easter holidays vary between two and three weeks. This is NOT a half-term holiday (which some older schools call an exeat). There are three terms at British schools, which vary in nomenclature, depending on the school. Sept-Dec my school called Michaelmas/Autumn, Jan-Easter was Lent/Winter, and Easter-July was Trinity/Spring. Thus Easter was between one term and another, and is not a half-term, which tends to be a long weekend or maybe up to five day break half way through a term, thus around the ends of Oct, end of Feb, and at Pentecost. Secondly, Brits are less overt in their expressions of belief, and this may be partly explained by Christian traditions being so deeply woven into everyday life. For example, it would be unthinkable for schools to be open during Holy Week, even if 90 percent of people don't know why. Even today, larger stores may not open on Easter Sunday. The headline in many media news sites today (Easter Day) is the attack on Johnson's new asylum policy by the Archbishop of Canterbury. If the Bishop of Washington attacked Biden today, it wouldn't create a ripple in US press.
Oh you've given me some work with your comment. I've had to Google and then talk to my husband about the word nomenclature. Wowza I went deep into that one. I'd never heard it before so thank you. I'm going to have to talk to my husband after the game so he can explain some of your comment to me. It's all good tho as I love learning new things.
@@Julia-uh4li Ma'am, please don't be concerned if learning new words or expressions is a necessary, and often most empowering, exercise as one moves from one country to another. When my nine and ten-year old children and I moved to live in Virginia for six years, in the 90s, we each learned innumerable new words, and dozens of aphorisms, entirely novel to us. I shan't try to list them all, but whippersnapper, diaper, faucet, booger, and kitsch, were among them. 🇰🇪
It used to be the case In Yorkshire that Good Friday was an ordinary working day, but they took the Monday and Tuesday as a holiday. How that began I don't know, but it wreaked havoc with national agreements about pay for Bank Holidays. If I remember correctly, the public sector mostly gave in and granted all three days as holiday. It is of course a time-honoured Yorkshire tradition to just be awkward wherever possible.
Easter school 2-week break in the UK is not "half term". Half term breaks are usually one week long in the middle of each of the three terms - Autumn term (Sep - Dec) Spring term (Jan - Easter) Summer term (Easter- -July) And then there's the summer break (July- September)
it's Lindt who make the hollow chocolate bunnies with a real bell around its neck, to us peeps means one of Harry Enfield 's early characters Stavros the Greek kebab shop owner "Hello Everybody Peeps"
On Monday in Boston, this year is Marathon Monday and Patriots Day the which has the battle green reenactment in Lexington and the Paul Revere warning that the “regulars” are coming. April 19, 1775. My hometown of Medford, Massachusetts is part of his route on his way to Lexington, which they usually do a reenactment every year.
Back in the day in the UK, you could get both white and brown eggs, Mum would get white eggs and we would decorate them with felt tip pens on Saturday and have them as boiled eggs for breakfast the next day, with hot cross buns, which back then were only in the shops the week before Easter.
It's weird but in the UK there is a perception that brown eggs taste better, and in the US white eggs do, but I'm pretty sure they all taste the same when you take the shell off. Because of this eggs of the 'inferior' colour were less profitable in both countries so in recent decades farmers have developed feeding methods to control the colour. A while back TV cook Delia Smith had a series on the BBC where she used only white eggs as apparently some designer decided they looked better on set. This set off a fad for white eggs and a demand the UK farming industry was hard pressed to satisfy.
@@MeFreeBee the colour of the egg makes no difference to the taste but the fact that America washes eggs before sale and we don’t does. Washed eggs lose their outer protective layer and thus lose moisture and freshness faster.
before painting (dye) the aggs in the UK and Germany we blow the egg first. tap a smaill whole at the tip and base and blow the egg out. you can use the egg content in an omelette and it leaves anhollow egg shell for painting so it doesnt need to be food dye.
Does anyone remember McIntosh's toffee eggs that came in a long box? I seem to remember the box was styled as a bus or train, and each of the 6 windows showed a little egg. Loved them!
In English-speaking countries, Easter takes its name from the Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess Eostra who was described in a book by the eighth-century English monk Bede.
Eostra was the pagan goddess of fertility and her name was given to the female hormone, oestrogen. Eggs and rabbits are symbols of fertility. The pagan festival celebrated the return (after winter) of fertility to the land and animals. Christianity, when it arrived here, took over many of the pagan holidays, festivals and customs, including Xmas (the winter solstice), lent (a time of scarcity in winter) and harvest festival.
Well, in Sweden, we also have a four day weekend. On the Thursday, kids dress up and goes around begging for candy.... yes.. no Halloween, but at Easter. And the kids dress up as old ladies or witches rather than monsters. I tried Peeps from the American food store, and found that we do already have peeps, but it's just candy. We also have candy corn to my surprise. No Easter egg hunt. Kids get paper or plastic eggs filled with candy, and sometimes some money. We also paint eggs for Easter morning or color them with leaves or vegetables when they're boiled. We have Easter Bunnies as iconography all over the place, but other than imagery I haven't found anything more than that. No mythos. The imagery of bunnies for easter are more than 150 years old here and that's almost fifty years older than the Modern Santa image.
Something that most people here won't be aware of is that UK Civil Servants (Government. employees) get an extra half day holiday on Maundy Thursday, the day before Good Friday. They may take the half day holiday anytime on or after Maundy Thursday, so that offices are not forced to close.
As you said Easter baskets might be something we make to collect the eggs around an Easter hunt? We definitely do the exchange of Easter eggs amongst family and friends. I have seen real eggs painted and used for Easter celebrations. Typically they’ve had a tiny hole put in the bottom and somebody’s blown out the internals of the egg so it’s very delicate, but it will not go off there’s no real egg left inside.
the US wash their eggs which removes the protective shell they also dont vacinate their chickens against salmonella which is why they have to refridgerate them. So dying them and leaving them out in the damp open before cooking and eating them doesnt seem like a good idea. UK eggs would be fine but that is one of the reasons why the dye doesnt take because it cant seep into the egg itself because it is protected by the unwashed shell.
Thank you for this, I found it really interesting. I’ve never understood the thing in the US about buying new fancy clothes for Easter. I don’t see the point of it. Easter baskets seems to have caught on in the UK now. I think they’re a good idea but I expect that they can get quite expensive. In my family we’ve never done the Easter bunny or Easter egg hunts. My Dad used to draw on our brown eggs & our chocolate ones were put in the fridge & given to us on Easter Sunday. We then thanked our relatives for them. Hot cross buns are a huge thing here, especially on Good Friday. Also on Good Friday we always eat fish, even if it’s just fish fingers. Happy Easter. I hope you have a lovely time.
I imagine a big difference between Easter egg hunts in the US and the UK is that in the US everyone gets involved, Whilst here the the UK it gets the kids out the way so you can have a sneaky beer.
The original reason the children have a 2 week holiday at Easter, is so they could go help gather the spring harvest... But the children don't have to do that anymore... But they still get the 2 weeks off 😉
Hi, I have seen painting of eggs in UK, but the issues with dying them i UK is they have not been washed, there is a protective coating on eggs, which makes them resistant to dyes.
Hi, British eggs haven't always been uniformly brown. When I was growing up, white eggs were much more common, but people believed that brown eggs were a sign of a more natural diet and therefore, more healthy. As a result, brown eggs came to be in high demand. As for waxed eggs, this is very much a Central and Eastern European tradition, where people did elaborate waxed designs and then dyed the eggs using coloured papers - which released their colour into the water. Traditionally, these eggs were taken to Church to be blessed at Easter. Some of the designs are reminiscent of Faberge eggs and it seems likely that Faberge's jewelled eggs came about because of the practice of decorating eggs for Easter. As far as I know, this custom originates in Eastern Europe/Greece and the Middle East. It is very popular in Germany, Austria and Hungary as well. I had assumed that the absence of dyed eggs in the UK was probably due to the Reformation, but apparently the tradition does exist in some European Protestant Churches, so I am at a loss to explain why it doesn't happen here.
When I was small we used to go hunting for the small Cadbury Creme Eggs, which were small chocolate eggs covered with foil. When I was a child my grandmother showed me how to dye eggs. Also when I was a small child in infants school (4 to 7 years old) we used to have an Easter Bonnet parade where we decorated a bonnet in an Easter style and had a parade in the school, showing them off to our friends and family, when I was around 6 years old the local news came and filmed us and my school was on the news, and that was my claim to fame in around the 1970 mark.
Growing up in England in the 1980's we would have an Easter parade at school which would involve wearing your Easter Bonnet that you had made at school and decorated with chicks, bunny ears, small painted eggs and spring flowers and grass
Peeps in the UK is slang for People. We do have white eggs but not usually commercially available as comercial egg laying hens tend to be of a brown coloured breed. If one wants a light coloured egg to decorate if unable to obtain white hens eggs, one needs to use a duck egg, which can often be duck egg blue (a bluish white) or a goose egg.
I think in the UK if you regularly attend a church either CofE or Catholic you will do all these things, never heard of peeps though, but generally we are less religious than the US so most people just do chocolate eggs. We used to give our kids a book to read instead of chocolate.
Don’t know if it’s that uncommon to dye / paint eggs in the UK, I always used to do this a school and with my cousins growing up, sometimes with real eggs but mostly with cardboard ones so we could keep them, we’d stick ribbons to them and so we could hang them from the easter tree
Colouring eggs is popular in continental Europe. Although it's not something Brits usually do, Britain is quite multicultural. And some families certainly do colour eggs.
as a child we used to make Easter Bonnets, a straw hat decorated with chicks and eggs. We would then meet at the local church and have games like roll the egg, egg painting. I guess its a church thing.
These traditions are probably extremely ancient. Before it was co-opted by the Christian church Easter was the Anglo-Saxon spring festival dedicated to the goddess Eastre whose symbols were the egg and the hare (the original "Easter bunny").
@@davidfaraday7963 Yes, I did a thesis at Uni on the pre-Christian festivals based on ancient traditions. I keep telling my kids that Christmas has got nothing to do with Jesus at all.
@@damianpritchard1456 Indeed, I get irritated with Christians going on about the "true meaning of Christmas" - meaning the birth of Jesus. Sorry, but the "true meaning of Christmas" is that its the mid-winter festival just a few days after the solstice, a time for feasting and merrymaking. I'm blowed if I'm going to let the Christian church hijack this festival for their own! There is absolutely nothing in the Bible to link the birth of Jesus to December, neither of the two Biblical nativity stories (which are largely fiction anyway) mention the time of year that the events described are supposed to have occurred.
@@davidfaraday7963 I say the Bethlehem story is completely fiction, as anybody who has studied the Bible and Roman history of that period without blinded by religion can tell. I worked it out when I was nine and I went to Catholic school. Anyway the "true meaning" of christmas is the commercialisation of giving gifts purily to benefit big corporations and capitalism.
Was never brought up as religious and tbh most of the uk is now non religious yet we persist on being convinced into buying* chocolate eggs and are very hypocritical. Easter celebration IMO is fading, most things are open now and less and less family time. Scotland don’t get good Friday as a traditional bank holiday, we get 2nd January to balance it off
We definitely noticed a lot of those giant eggs around everywhere this past week in London. Scott really wanted to take one home, but they are SO BIG!!! We got some small Cadbury eggs and After Eight mint eggs, instead (along with everything else we stuffed in the new suitcase we bought at Primark . . . HA!!!!) I hope you enjoyed your Peeps! ❤️
As already mentioned, in Scotland ( though they might do it in England), we used to paint hard boiled eggs and roll them down the nearest steep hill to crack the shelll. Might also be linked to rolling witches down the hill in barrels with spikes inside in the dark ages.
It was commonplace for white eggs to be hard boiled and dyed for Easter in the UK right up to the 1990’s. I blame Delia Smith for introducing the larger brown eggs about 30 years ago, though they do make better cakes. Chocolate eggs have been very popular here for well over a century, and Easter wouldn’t be the same without them. The best ones have hidden sweets inside. Egg hunts have crossed the pond from the US and so has the Easter bunny, so now this is the norm for children. Most eggs hidden are crème eggs and well worth finding.
Most schools children 5 to 10 decorate Easter hats . When I was younger egg dying and painting was always done and egg hunts with chocolate eggs which were wrapped in foil or Easter wrapping paper , adults tend to give flowers or plants to each other I live in the south east of England.
Eggcellent video as usual. I certainly died eggs as a child, it was a massive thing to do in my school at least in Durham, UK. We used to have a competition judged by the teachers to find the best decorated. I also used to help my kids die eggs for their schools. We then used to play a game called ‘Jarring’ where we used to crack our eggs on an opponents egg, or roll them down a hill, the one to the bottom wins. Great days.
Although the Scots participate in many of the customs associated with Easter, they do have one tradition that is said to have originated in Scotland. On Easter Sunday, many Scottish families participate in an egg rolling contest. After they’re boiled and painted, the decorated eggs are taken to the park where they are rolled down a hill. The person whose egg rolls the farthest distance without breaking is the winner of the contest. Although it is generally considered a children’s game, egg rolling actually has a religious meaning: the rolling of the eggs down the hill symbolizes the rolling away of the stones on Christ’s tomb associated with his resurrection.
Firstly, Easter was celebrated in Britain before Jesus. Its name comes from Eostre, an ancient fertility goddess, also known as Ishtar. Astaroth and Astarte. Her symbols were eggs and rabbits. Secondly, we did dye eggs but the myth that brown eggs are healthier has stamped the custom out except in some areas.
I am currently looking at 2 Lindt Lindor Easter eggs belonging to my children - which I am sure will taste nice, but they have a slight premium on the price that a relative must have paid - and they have enough chocolate anyway (There are another 9) - I don't think they have opened any yet - not sure though as I would expect an even number. Oh forgot my youngest got one handed to her in church on Sunday (some people do go) my eldest is 18 - so considered an adult (didn't get one)
When I was a child my mother would never cook meat on Good Friday. We would always have fish. We are not a Catholic family but it was traditional. Easter is based on the old Pagan festival of Oestre. Bede noted that in eighth-century England, the month of April was called Eosturmonath, or Eostre Month, after the goddess Eostre. He wrote that a pagan festival of spring in the name of the goddess had become assimilated into the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Decorated Eggs would be exchanded as a symbol of new life.
We bought our kids giant plastic eggs with their names on. We fill it with small sweets,pjs,toys and their chocolate easter egg. Been doing it a few years now 🏴. When i was a kid we painted eggs and rolled out eggs. Rolling of the egg seems to have died out around here
We used to dye eggs, not so much now. Used to get a variety of eggs, back in the day, not so much now. Easter is older than Christianity, the Easter bunny was in fact the Hare.
You forget to mention Chocolate Easter Eggs can be enormously expensive in the UK from 5kg chocolate eggs at £300 to the insane Harrods eggs that can cost way in excess of £40,000 which have Rolex watches or Cartier jewellery inside. But seeing as you pick the gift inside it could literally be worth £ Millions
I wish my job let us have Good Friday off! And to me, peeps are gross. Trying to chew gritty sugar is yuck lol US Easter candy/baskets almost always have jelly beans too
Interesting video. Another aspect from the British side is that it is increasingly common, though definitely not widespread, to give Easter greeting cards. The market seems to be getting bigger each year and more stores are selling them. Interestingly hardly any of the designs will be Christian images, (unless you bought them from a church), but instead will be light hearted, secular designs like bunnies or emphasising Spring weather. Let us know about giving Easter cards in the USA. Interestly England will have four days off for Easter, with the two bank holidays on Good Friday and Easter Monday, but Scotland doesn't observe a holiday on Easter Monday. So in England and Wales most office workers are getting a guaranteed 4 day break which often doesn't happen at Christmas, which is celebrated more passionately, but is obviously less religiouslysignifcant. Also in England certain large shops cannot open by law on Easter Sunday. Are shops closed or open at Easter in the USA? Have a happy and holy Easter! x
I love marshmallows but I hate peeps. I hate the coating on peeps. I have seen egg dying kits in uk on the off occasion. But it’s not very common. You can get white egg in uk. I know this as Iv bought the, but again they aren’t that common. People seem to prefer the brown ones or maybe it’s trust the chicken we use here are better suited to the British climate?
Peeps is the term used by Hoobs to refer to humans. Peeps live on what the Hoobs call the Peep Planet. Young Peeps (children) are known as "Tiddlypeeps." Baby Peeps are called "Squigglytiddlepeep." Elderly Peeps are known as "Wrinkly Peeps."
Nursery age children are encouraged to put their pacifier/dummy under their pillow so that when the Easter Bunny comes, usually when the're asleep, he will swap the pacifier/dummy for Easter eggs.
So, for all the heathens blaming the Americans for the Easter Bunny, it is not their fault. The Easter Bunny is actually a German thing, the first recorded mention was in 1682, where a doctor explained where the Easter Rabbit comes from. It was a tradition in South Germany.
I think your experience of Easter depends on where you live. I grew up in the UK and experienced Easter as a big event. I moved to the USA and found that Easter "didn't exist". I wondered what happened to it? (No public holidays for me, neither Friday nor Monday.) So your American experience of Easter is probably going to depend on which state you live in, or maybe whether you go to church or not.
Did you know that in the UK the Easter Act 1928, was passed by Parliament and given royal assent to fix Easter Sunday to be the Sunday following the second Saturday in April. The Act has never been brought ibto force. If it had been, Easter would have been last weekend.
@@jenniedarling3710 Unfortunately under the Act, the Easter date would still be variable as it merely removed the relationship between Easter and the equinox from the equation by stating the Sunday after the second Saturday of April. It would mean that Easter Sunday would be as early as 8th or as late as the 15th. It would be good better if it were fixed though.
One of my co workers is from Ghana and I asked what she was doing for Easter. She said in Ghana they only really go to church. She asked why the UK does chocolate eggs, so my response was: “So when Jesus came back, eggs like a metaphor, like a chick emerging from the shell. Then capitalism happened and now there’s a rabbit.”
Hi Kalyn, on religious, in the England we don't tend to shout out our religion, I think it comes from having had immigrants who have been persecuted (some by us) for their religion, also our own issues with religious wars. Its sort of on a par with US 'don't ask, don't tell policy!' I think it may be different in Scotland, Wales and NI.. Given the religious nature of the US, I'm surprised that Easter Monday is not the big thing (ignored), its when he rose, isn't that the miracle?
The way I understand it, according to the Bible, Jesus rose "on the third day" not "3 days later". So, as the crucifixion was on Good Friday, that's Day 1, Saturday is Day 2 and Easter Sunday is Day 3. Monday would be "3 days later" not "the 3rd Day." It's similar to the argument about when the 12th Day of Christmas is. If Christmas Day is Day 1, then the 12th Day is the 5th of January, but many people say it's the 6th of January, which would be 12 days after Christmas Day, not the 12th Day OF Christmas.
In the U.S. there is supposed to be separation of church and state, which may be why there is no Easter Monday holiday. Although, Christmas is an official federal holiday - but it’s the only one that is a Christian holiday. I guess the difference is since Easter is always on Sunday there wasn’t as much pressure to give a day off as there was for Christmas. Also, it’s not universal here to have a day off for Good Friday. I only get “early leave” (2 hours off) at work, and some local schools and businesses get no time off.
An Easter egg hunt would usually involved small chocolate eggs in the UK. The use of a real egg would be rare. When I was younger we used to paint real eggs at school. But they’d never be used for a hunt. How disappointing that you couldn’t eat the eggs you found… haha.
Nobody gives a toss about Easter: it is just a weekend off when the public transport people think it is Sunday three days out a set of four. Hopeless cretins. As a result, those of us without cars are stranded at home. Also, Easter is not “half term”. In the UK, we don't usually do semesters, rather the academic year (which starts on September 1st) is divided into three terms, usually called (in schools, anyway) Autumn, Spring, and Summer Terms. The Easter holiday divides the Spring and Summer terms. Half term holidays are usually one week long, not two, as is the Easter holiday.
Hiya. I'm going to say, rightly or wrongly, that decorating real eggs in the UK is going to depend on or be related to whether or not one's ancestry is Continental or at least East European. As for "foodsafe colouring", isn't that an American oxymoron? Stay safe. All the best to you.
