Lamb is tricky to cook. Smith’s occasionally will have good lamb. The best place from lamb is in Springville Meats IMO. My wife doesn’t like lamb though so I usually only get to eat it when going to Bombay House. Lamb Saag is my favorite.

To the Messiah, I meant to handle it on my iPhone. LOL.

Bob, yes I agree this is less a Mormon thing than a regional thing. I think it was big back home because the area was overwhelmingly Anglican. My guess, perhaps wrong, is that the places with a lot of Easter celebrations are places with a lot of high church emphasis like Anglican/Episcopalian or Catholicism. Places where the religion was more low church oriented and much more minimalistic likely have more reserved holidays. I suspect Christmas would be more reserved in those places too were it not for the overwhelming commercialization of Christmas the past 50 years. While they’ve tried with Easter it’s just not at remotely the same degree as Halloween or Christmas. Mormonism with its connection to Campbellism and other low church traditions has that minimalist tendencies despite our temple ceremonies being much more high church like.

Louisiana has a very large Catholic population and that ends bound up in the tradition from the French and Spanish eras there. So I think that is why it celebrates Easter in a big way. Indeed the biggest festival, Mardi Gras, is tied to lent which is tied to Easter.

I’ve tried making lamb, which was incredibly hard to find in Utah and turned out too tough to even make into hash. I’ve made a braided egg bread as a treat for my primary kids and had a hard time explaining the whole egg thing.

Eggs and rabbits, spring, fertility, etc. Old goddesses Oestara and Ishtar (who went to the underworld to resurrect Tammuz). Word root for estrogen.

History is messy. Any excuse for a party, I guess.

Goes with “Grate Expectations” by Edmund Wells and “Ethel the Aardvark goes Quantity Surveying”

Aaron, whether we should have to do something, we’re all in this together. To me part of sustaining someone in their stewardship is trying to help them. This is helping them. We’re all weak relying on the grace of God. Knowing how much is involved in being a bishop or Stake President (although thankfully not a call I’ve ever had to deal with – just a few times as councilor in Elders Quorum Presidency) I can easily see this as being unintentional by people often overwhelmed with their responsibility. Looking at this through an eye of charity is almost always the right thing to do. Further God’s grace is often manifest by God inspiring us to act in small ways on our own.

Although we had a some excellent talks in Sacrament Mtg today on the Atonement along with a lovely solo musical rendition of “His Hands”, I did miss hearing the Easter story from the scriptures, more congregational singing, and flowers (borrowed lilies anyone?) of any kind to make it feel like a celebratory event.

As for at home activities, when the children were small we always did the Easter baskets, egg hunts, etc. on Saturday and kept the Sunday focus on the Risen Christ.

We have celebrated a seder meal for almost 20 years. It has become something my children look forward to all year, a mix of story and faith, silliness and hymns. The week before Good Friday is a flurry of prep, of food and house cleaning, of reading the story and thinking about how I want to teach it to my children and guests this year. The 3500 year old tradition is amazingly flexible and meaningful.

Saturday morning is for the Easter Bunny- this is when chocolate happens. It is funny and silly and no one goes to church sticky.

Sunday is for church. The service is hit and miss for how it supports the season but I do my best as organist to help.

I do hot cross buns on Good Friday, but have rarely done egg hunts. I would like to do more properly religious stuff around Easter, but aside from attending other people’s church services, am not sure what.