So when did you stop getting presents like baskets, stuffed animals, and sweets for Easter? How did the gifts change as you got older? Or do you still get Easter gifts as an adult, and what do you get?
It’s been a long time for me. The squeeze and I don’t do present stuff at all, not even birthday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter or any other present giving occasion. We do enough stuff for each other and together all through the year that we just don’t see the need for special occasions to give gifts. The big thrill is the day after Hallowe’en, Valentine’s Day and Easter when we can score cheap chocolate.
Heck, he’s already been to Rite Aid this afternoon and struck gold with Cadbury Eggs, Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs, chocolate bunnies, and jellybeans. 
I’m 31, and my parents still give me and my wife a basket every year, and we give them one back. It’s smaller than when I was a kid, but I still get a mix of candy and little toys. 
My mom always gave me something for Easter, after I outgrew the Easter Bunny she would give me something wonderful, gorgeous sugar egg dioramas, potted blooming plants, a special piece of jewelry or collectible.
I lost my mom last July. It’s being a bittersweet day for me.
When I got into junior high school.
I stopped getting things when I moved out of my mom’s house at 18. My children, at 24 and 21, still get things. The 24-year-old lives far enough away that I have to mail goodies, so I just sent her a chocolate bunny and a whimsical small toy, but the 21-year-old is still in the house, so she got a full basket with all the works.
I’m 47 and I gotta say, I’m a little sad I didn’t get any peeps today. 
No one left to give me an Easter gift. But my children got baskets until they left home. They are thirty-seven and forty-one now and we still send a card with money.
Today the thirty-seven-year-old said he missed hunting for eggs at his grandparents.
ETA: Well, my husband is here but we are in agreement about not getting each other gifts any more because we have just about everything we want. And candy is out because. . .
I’m 39. I just got an Easter basket from my dad. It had Kind bars for me and Hershey’s kisses that I was ordered to give to my boyfriend.
I still send my daughter gifts and candy, although she is 31, and I buy myself candy. I don’t remember when my parent’s quit giving Easter baskets and candy. It was a long, long time ago.
Probably when I was 11 and was shipped off to boarding school, so…45 years?
This year. I’m 39. But it’s my own fault. I finally snapped at my mom and told her we’re not Christian, we’re not “doing” Easter. She was the one who provided the baskets, at her house, when we went there for Easter Dinner.
I did get my daughter a basket and hid some eggs at our house, because I’m not going to punish her for my crisis of conscience, but that was the extent of it this year.
Working full time and going to school full time has made me cranky, and left me no spare time to “celebrate” holidays that aren’t mine. I feel a little guilty, but only a little.
aWe always got a little something at Easter, even when we were older. I remember my Mom used to get big chocolate eggs at Easter at Woolworth’s, and you could have the kids name written on the egg. Just little things like that.
Sometimes I get flowers from my husband. Today he brought me home a plant.
I have two girls ages 12 and 13. I loved my children when the were so little and naive, we would leave carrots for the Easter Bunny, and sprinkle special reindeer food on the porch for them to see on Christmas Eve.
So, now I have a rule in my house, if you do not believe, you get nothing! It is really just a running joke with me and my kids. Last night my 13 year old forgot, and asked me if I got her anything for Easter, and I told her no. She laughed and said “how about the Easter Bunny”? I got them both cheap little baskets and filled them with bunny ears, bunny socks, and a little candy. Nothing big.
As long as I am here, I will give them something for every holiday, nothing big, but just to let them know I love them. (Besides, I really, really, love giving gifts to people I love).
It still hasn’t happened. It slacked off for a few years, but now we get them. The only way I could see it stopping is if neither me nor my sister were at mom’s house for Easter–as shipping would a problem.
Interesting. I would have thought Easter would be near a spring-renewal type holiday for you, like how you celebrate Yule (or whatever it’s called) around Christmas time. That’s what I’ve been taught the the original “Easter” really was.
I’ve never seen a basket have any Christian imagery whatsoever, so I’d have though they’d be okay. The whole “rabbits hiding eggs” thing is definitely about spring, not the resurrection. Unless your mom insists you go to mass or reads the Easter story or similar, I’d have thought the “Easter dinner” would be entirely secular.
The only non-secular part about Easter that we ever did was going to Church, and that was something we did every Sunday. Heck, it was the one day that we would likely skip the night church service, as being with family was considered more important. Our church no longer even has a proper night service at Easter–just a come-and-go communion for the few people who have nothing else to do.
Sure, mythologically speaking (probably not historically speaking, but that’s another rant for another day). That’s Beltane. It’s May 1st, and I’ll be celebrating it with other people who celebrate it. That’s my spring holiday, not Easter.
Our Easter baskets never held overtly Christian symbols, but have you been on Facebook today? Lots of church pictures and prayers and thanks to Jesus all over my News Feed. Easter is not yet celebrated as a generic secular holiday like Santa-Christmas, at least not in my world. I’m more acutely aware of that then ever this year, although it’s been building for many years.
And no, my mom isn’t Christian, either, so it’s not even like I’m turning my back on her deeply held beliefs or anything. It’s just…inertia. We’ve always done it so we have to keep doing it. But to me, that’s demeaning to the holiest holiday of the Christians, not to mention another day off of working on stuff that can’t be delayed any more. (And I spent most of yesterday with her, so…sorry, quota met. Got to get back to Evidence Based Practice and Applied Nursing Research!)
I can’t even really articulate why I’m so anti-Easter-for-me this year. I think it probably has more to do with my frustrations with my mother and her complete lack of respecting how difficult and time consuming this degree program (that she pushed me into) is than an actual religious objection. But it’s definitely part of it.
So, no basket for me this year. I don’t deserve it anyway.
I never got anything but jelly beans and real colored hard boiled eggs that I helped dye myself. Maybe a yellow marshmallow chick. In the same basket and cellulose grassy-looking stuff, kept hidden since last year. And then I had to humiliate myself looking behind the sofa for the damned things.
Religous holiday instead of “Easter”. Never got any chocolate for “Easter” – got that at Christmas though, which we celebrated as a cultural holiday.
I’m pretty sure I was 16. My mother found a homemade bong in my room while she was hiding my Easter basket after the Vigil mass. After a very uncomfortable conversation, she explained that she was too preoccupied with the next day’s activities to be mad at me or to work out a punishment (20-30 family members converge on my parent’s house for Easter brunch). She would merely stop giving me an Easter basket forever, and would keep the bong until my first-born son’s 16th birthday, at which point she would present it to him. She assures me that when the time comes I will realize just how cruel and harsh her punishment really is. I still think I got off easy.
We never got toys at Easter, and we actually assembled our own baskets. Mom would buy and assortment of candies, a few bags of Easter grass, and we were told how much we could each have. The trading began right away because one sister hates nuts of all kinds. We couldn’t eat anything till after church on Easter morning, but there were no surprises.
I don’t remember when the individual baskets stopped, but yesterday we converged on Mom’s for dinner, and everyone came away with a big chocolate bunny. Plus she had a huge punchbowl filled with all manner of candies, and she encouraged us all to take what we wanted.