This crowd is made up of priests on a pilgrimage in Bucharest, Romania, ahead of Orthodox Palm Sunday. Many Orthodox churches base their Easter date on the Julian calendar, not the Gregorian calendar used by Western countries. This year, Orthodox Easter Sunday will fall on 8 April.
“What do you mean you have to work on Good Friday?” My friend wasn’t a first responder, a doctor or a journalist. Why would she have to work on Easter? That’s how I found out that Easter isn’t a public holiday in the US and, frankly, I was shocked. A typical Australian, I thought most Americans were paid-up members of the religious right, and the idea that they would work on the holiest days of the Christian calendar made no sense. Easter holidays are sacred to Australians, although not just for religious reasons. Who would give up a four-day holiday at the beginning of the autumn, and the last chance to get away for a break before the cold weather sets in?
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That doesn’t seem to have changed in the 18 years since I left. Prime minister Malcom Turnbull’s Easter messages hint at the true meaning of Easter to Australians. One whole minute of his 1.35-minute 2016 message was devoted to exhortations to drive carefully. A typhoon in 2017 meant that Jesus got a mention as a model of service to others but the message was still proportionally weighted to the “drive defensively”, “take a break every two hours”, “enjoy the long weekend”, rather than the rebirth aspect of this Christian rite.
And while there’s no holiday in the US, a quick trip to my local fish store last Friday underscored the importance of the religious calendar to my fellow New Yorkers. The place was packed – a sign that Lent is in full swing. My mother, a Catholic, served fish every Friday even after Pope Paul VI let everyone off the hook, so to speak. Because my father was a Methodist, I can eat meat any time, but thanks to Mum I wouldn’t dare eat it on a Friday, let alone a Lenten Friday.
When I was growing up it was a different story. Good Friday was a meat-free Friday on steroids. Every business, every shop, restaurant and petrol station that didn’t shut down on Good Friday was fined. It was a dismal day for children. Back then, most Australians lived in church-going nuclear families. If you were at home you were expected to sit quietly and contemplate Christ’s crucifixion. If you were out, you were supposed to be at church or on your way to or from church. One time, when a few of the kids in my neighbourhood escaped the gloom of our homes and played rambunctiously in the street, a stray parent appeared from nowhere, yelling, “How dare you have fun the day that Christ died?”
The only “good” thing about Good Friday in those days was warm hot cross buns smothered in butter. That and the images of Christians around the world flogging themselves and dragging heavy, wooden crosses on their backs on the television news at night. They made me feel glad to be Australian. Those rituals seemed so extreme and distant from my practice and, as the days drew in and the temperature dropped, even the positive depictions of Easter – flowers, fertility, and new life – seemed so at odds with my experience.
Things picked up on Easter Eve though. I grew up in Kangaroo Flat, a suburb of the regional city of Bendigo where the annual Easter fair got under way on Saturday with a parade that boasted the longest imperial Chinese dragon outside of China, and sideshows and amusement park rides with names like the Octopus and the Cha Cha Cha in the main street.
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Back then, it was one of only two occasions each year – the agricultural show being the other – when we got access to “American”-style jam donuts and fairy floss (cotton candy). Easter Day, which for us kids meant church, then chocolate eggs, bunnies and jelly beans – a sugar high that carried us through the next week – was a favourite. Once I left home, the Easters I didn’t return were spent hiking or camping or at the ocean with friends.
Perhaps that’s why we Aussies aren’t so in tune with the religious calendar – it’s pegged closely to the northern hemisphere’s seasons. While Americans are cleaning house and preparing for the renewal of spring, Australians are primed for a Thanksgiving-like overindulgence. True, we are secular, but we’re also topsy-turvy, and that might be the reason for our lackadaisical embrace of the resurrection. In any case, here in New York, as the temperature rises and lawns turn green, it makes perfect sense to celebrate the joy of a new beginning.
• Jillian Abbott is an Australian journalist living in New York City
Nearly 70% of world’s cocoa comes from Ivory Coast and Ghana where there are millions of child labourers
The logo that shows if your Easter eggs were made by child labour
Have you ever wondered where the cocoa in your Easter eggs comes from?
Australians eat a huge amount of chocolate every Easter without knowing the cocoa in that chocolate may have come from farms in west Africa that rely on child labour, and possibly human trafficking.
It’s an insidious problem that a group called Stop the Traffik wants Australians to be mindful of this Easter.
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“Easter eggs are about new life,” says Fuzz Kitto, a co-director of Stop the Traffik Australian Coalition. “But our kids could be eating chocolate eggs that have been made by kids that don’t have a life.”
Stop the Traffik is a coalition of church groups and community organisations that campaigns to eradicate child slavery and labour and human trafficking from the global fashion, cotton, tea, fishing and chocolate industries.
But it has a simple request for chocolate buyers this weekend: check if the packets of your chocolates carry logos that show the cocoa in the chocolate has been sourced from a certified farm, or that the coca farmers have been trained in better farming techniques and management.
Stop the Traffik says the main reason young children – mostly boys – are trafficked and farmers use child labour in cocoa-growing regions is because the farmers do not earn enough to make a “living income”, which is the amount needed for basic housing, food and essentials, and which allows families to send their children to school.
It says more than 90% of the world’s cocoa production is harvested by small-hold farmers and their workers – not large companies – and the income they derive from the sale of cocoa beans is insufficient to lift them out of poverty.
Nearly 70% of the world’s cocoa comes from two countries in west Africa– Ivory Coast and Ghana – where millions of children are estimated to be in child labour.
Most farmers in the two countries live under the extreme poverty line, defined by the UN as US$1.90 a day.
Stop the Traffik says for a cocoa farmer to get close to a living income, 100g of milk chocolate would cost about 12 cents more, and an average Australian chocolate consumer would need to pay $60 more a year for their chocolate for the extra amount to filter through to farmers.
“We’re saying to people, just think of it like a chocolate tax that will help farmers get a living income so they won’t be forced to use child labour,” Kitto said.
Stop the Traffik released a report this week, A Matter of Taste, that asked the world’s largest chocolate manufacturers – Ferrero, the Hershey Company, Lindt & Sprüngli, Mars Incorporated, Mondelez, Nestle, and Tony’s Chocolonely – to reveal the percentage of their cocoa bean supply that was sustainably sourced.
In a submission to last year’s parliamentary inquiry into establishing a Modern Slavery Act in Australia, it also warned that Australian consumers were “inevitably implicated” in slavery through the consumption of imported goods where global supply chains were opaque.
“The only way in which Australian consumers can develop an awareness of the potential connection between the products they consume and human trafficking and slavery is if corporations are required to be transparent with regard to the way in which their products are produced and made available for sale within Australia,” its submission said.
The inquiry found the value of imported cocoa in Australia was $334.7m, and it had a “high risk” of forced labour.
Kitto says Stop the Traffik tries to eradicate child labour by working directly with cocoa farmers, and the companies buying their cocoa, to ensure that farmers are paid a premium when they don’t use child labour. “We’re not into name and shame, we’re into name and fame,” Kitto said.
“The reality is there are bad things happening and there are good things happening, but you’ll never change it by just focusing on the bad things.
“It’s when companies and communities start to do good things and you highlight them and encourage them, that’s when it brings about much more change.”
Easter is always on a Sunday, so the stock market, most government offices, and many banks are closed for Easter—as they usually are on Sundays.
Still, since the Easter is a widely celebrated religious holiday but not a national holiday, it can be hard to tell what’s open and what’s closed on Easter.
As you’d probably guess, Walmart and many other major retailers are open with normal hours on Easter—as are the vast majority of locations for national restaurant chains like Starbucks, McDonald’s, Burger King, Waffle House, and Taco Bell. Many restaurants have special menus and Easter brunch and dinner deals as well.
Here are more specifics on what’s open and what’s closed on Easter 2018.
What stores are closed on Easter Sunday?
Easter is not an official federal holiday, but several major retailers shut down for the holiday regardless. Some entire malls are closed on Easter 2018 too: The Orange Park Mall in Florida and the Monmouth Mall in New Jersey are closed, for example, as are many Simon malls around the country. Note that even if a mall’s stores are closed on Easter Sunday, the mall’s restaurants and movie theaters are still probably open.
There are also several national retailers that are closed nationwide for Easter 2018. Stores that are closed on Sunday, April 1, include:
• Best Buy
• Costco
• Dillard’s
• J.C. Penney
• Macy’s
• Publix
• Sam’s Club
• Target
• T.J. Maxx and Marshalls
What restaurants are open on Easter?
The vast majority of restaurants are open on Easter Sunday. Among the national chain restaurants, exceptions are Chipotle, which keeps most locations closed on Easter, and Chick-fil-A, which is closed in every location on every Sunday—so that obviously includes Easter. Some independent restaurants may be closed on Easter as well, so it’s smart to check ahead of time.
Are banks open on Easter?
Banks that are normally closed on Sundays will of course be closed on Easter. As for banks with branches that are normally open on Sunday, some of them are closed on Easter as well. For example, most TD Bank and Wells Fargo locations are closed on Easter, even though they have teller hours on other Sundays.
Among the few banks that are open with normal hours on Easter Sunday 2018 are KeyBank, First Citizens, PNC, and U.S. Bank.
