Easter seems like a bigger deal in Australia than it is in the US. In the US, it's one day of egg hunts and maybe seeing family, and church for some people. Easter is considered a very big family holiday in Australia; it's a big one for people to travel back to see their families (like Americans would do for X-mas or Thanksgiving). Before Easter, almost every school has an "Easter Hat Parade" where the kids show-off their crafty creativity (seriously, google image Easter Hat Parade if you've never heard of this phenomenon - it's a thing). Then, actual Easter is always a long 4-day weekend where many businesses close or have reduced hours, and it's very common for people to take a few days off work between Easter and ANZAC Day and end up taking a 10-day holiday. It's also school holidays, the two weeks between the first and second term of the school year. So it's longer and better than spring break, but it's autumn instead, and at the beginning of the school year.
The first year we moved here, Mike and I went to the Royal Sydney Easter Show out at Olympic Park. We hadn't gone since until this year, for PJ's first show (the equivalent of a gigantic county fair). The Show is definitely sensory overload. It's like every other entertainment extravaganza that you pay to get into, where they also want you to spend money on everything - food, rides, games, and souvenirs. Luckily, there are lots of animals to see and even touch up close, and special shows like woodchopping competitions, a rodeo, etc. that don't cost anything extra.
Penelope looked like a mini mahout, riding on an elephant for her first carousel ride. There was this kind of narrow kids alley where they had rides like that and games for little ones, and we ended up riding the carousel at the exact same time as the "Spongebob Parade", which was coincidentally the first parade Penelope has ever seen. So, she had very serious look on her face full of confused wonder. Suddenly she found herself riding on this elephant, rotating around the carousel with lights and music, and every time we came around to the side of the road there would be another float with colorful characters dancing, or stilt walkers/puppeteers, or Ninja Turtles posing, etc.
It was some good family fun, and we managed to escape without buying a single showbag. Showbags are themed souvenir bags that are full of whatever you particularly might want, for example, a Hello Kitty showbag, or a Kit Kat showbag, or a Womens Weekly showbag, or a Spiderman showbag. They aren't particularly great deals, and you can see what is in the bag before you buy it, so I don't honestly get why they're such a big deal. There is seriously a giant warehouse full of stands selling them. There are some people that literally bring their shopping carts or wagons to spend hundreds of dollars on showbags. It's so weird. We decided that it's probably a big deal here because the kids never get to have a true Halloween experience, where they have a big bag of candy that is suddenly theirs and seems in one moment like more than they could possibly eat by themselves. That's essentially, that's what a showbag is. Parents probably tell their kids, "You can get one showbag", or "You can have X$ to spend on showbags". So, Easter kind of becomes the candy and chocolate holiday in the absence of Halloween here. Luckily, PJ is still too young to understand the commercial aspect of special events, and she just takes them in for the spectacle they are.
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