For a number of years, I performed the same annual ritual as Easter approached. In the grey industrial offices where I worked as an English trainer, I would commandeer a white board and write the same message in large, unmissable print: Remember! It’s Easter not Eastern. To outside observers, this may have seemed a rather pedantic message to be displaying to a room full of German office workers, and you’d probably be right. After all, being pedantic is the job description of most language teachers. However, there was a method in my madness. One of the top questions I would get as the end of March approached was “Is it happy Eastern or happy Easter?”, which came from a frequent, but simple mispronunciation/mistranslation of “Frohe Ostern!” (Happy Easter). Sometimes the question asker would tell me a colleague had sworn on their life that it was “Eastern”, other times a presenter may have said it and left a room of software developers scratching their heads. The question would come from a variety of sources: class participants, managers passing me in the hallway, and frankly anyone who heard me speak English. Perhaps it was all the Agile methodology I was surrounded by, but eventually, I decided to simply streamline the process.

It was actually quite nice to finally have an Easter tradition, other than attempting to eat my bodyweight in chocolate. Despite being brought up by an Anglican vicar, Easter was never really much of an event in our household. If anything it just meant we would have to go to church more. Of course, my siblings and I could all look forward to getting chocolate eggs of varying sizes, however, this was another mark against Easter in my opinion. As the youngest, my chocolate egg would always be the smallest in the family. For decades I assumed it was my parents playing favourites, until I had my own child and witnessed the sugar fuelled insanity of a small child on Class-A chocolate. Now I understand it was a survival strategy.

The lack of traditions in my own family seemed to extend to most of the people I knew. Easter was generally seen as a crap Christmas among my friends. Sure you got chocolate and school holidays, but no one was getting Ghostbusters action figures from the Easter Bunny. These formative experiences of holiday boredom, punctuated by a weekend of stomach aches brought on from inhaling chocolate, did not prepare me for Easter in Germany.

Had I moved to the East of Germany, I might have felt more at home. After all, the years of DDR have left their mark and it’s significant that many of the events held in cities such as Leipzig and Dresden have a distinctly secular feel. Nevertheless, it's still possible to find performances of annual Passion Plays there, often in the same way Germans have been doing for centuries. These live performances of the Easter story, usually include some poor actor pretending to be crucified, can be seen across Germany. One of the largest national TV stations, RTL, broadcasts their own version in the run-up to Easter. Last year’s was a modern retelling, with Jesus in a duffel coat, taking selfies with his fans.

Religion for the Tick-Tock generation aside, there are lots of different ways Germany comes alive as the weather improves and Easter holidays begin. I’ve always loved the Easter decorations that can be seen in many homes, from hand carved Easter rabbits, to the ubiquitous bush decorated with plastic eggs, Germans seem to go all out for a holiday that was seemingly an afterthought in the UK. Even edible eggs get into the Easter spirit as many supermarkets, bakeries and butchers begin to sell pre-painted hard boiled eggs, which look nice if nothing else.

Although the pandemic put a dampener on celebrations over the last few years, this year sees the full return of public events such as Easter fairs/ Volksfests. Most towns and cities have some kind of event on, with rollercoasters, funhouses, and naturally, beer tents. In Bavaria especially, there will be many people dusting off their Trachten and preparing to raise a Maß or dance on a wobbly beer bench this weekend. There’s something to be said for these events, and although they may differ in style and beer quality depending on the state, they act as a unifying cultural norm.

It’s reasonable that many people may not want to sit in beer tent full of potential Covid infections and for those people there’s usually an Ostermarkt to visit instead. Germany loves an open air market, and like the Easter fairs, most cities have one. The highlight of any open air market here is not actually something as prosaic as the food or some nice Easter decorations. By far the most amusing and entertaining part of these markets is the various market stalls attempting to sell punters some marvellous new kitchen gadget.

Anyone who’s seen an infomercial or watched a shopping channel will instantly know the drill. Essentially what you have is a very confident person attempting to sell you the “world’s sharpest scissors” or a “modern way to slice an onion”, which entails the sharpest blade ever invented, surrounded by brightly covered plastic, preferably green. I could spend hours watching these salespeople work, it’s QVC but live and in-person. I’m always mesmerised watching them cut a carrot in 2.1 seconds, while telling an audience of pensioners why the knives they’ve had at home for the last ten years are dog shit.

I’m not a gullible man, but I always find myself about to buy one of these inane tools. Usually it’s my wife who snaps me out of my consumer trance, but sometimes, just sometimes she falls under the same spell of some shiny plastic tool that we both know deep down will be relegated to the same cupboard we keep a dust covered sandwich maker. Only the other day we found ourselves handing over our hard earned cash for some such kitchen gadget. As we discussed it, the salesperson overheard us speaking English and smoothly began to chat us up. We paid and as we were about to leave the stall, they waved and shouted after us “Happy Eastern!”.

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