People walk past a shop advertising inexpensive gift for Easter Richmond southwest London, March 27.Alastair Grant/The Associated Press
Easter is around the corner, which means as a parent, I’m bracing for another round of holiday expenditures and expectations.
I didn’t grow up in a religious family, but we did celebrate holidays like Christmas and Easter. Still, aside from an Easter egg hunt, a turkey dinner with family, and maybe a greeting card, Easter wasn’t a big spending occasion.
When I became a parent, I assumed the holiday would continue to be a blip on my radar – hide a few colourful chocolate eggs around the house and call it a day. Boy was I wrong.
These days, Easter has morphed into a consumerist spectacle. The Easter Bunny is at the local mall charging for photos with our kids, akin to photos with Santa. There are countless TikTok gift haul videos showing Easter gifts kids and teens receive, many worth hundreds of dollars.
One Easter video from TikTok user @makeitwithmicah, from February, 2025, shows her packaging a basket full of Lego sets, giant Jellycat stuffed animals, and other gifts for her young daughter. She also sets up an Easter tree – which looks a lot like a Christmas tree – with egg decorations. It has over three million views.
Why are parents making holidays so expensive?
Last year, when my daughter was two, I leaned in like an earnest new parent. I bought decorations for our home and bunny-adorned outfits. I purchased the Easter Bunny paw prints for our floor to make it look like he walked through our living room while hiding chocolate eggs. I curated cute Easter treat baskets for the kids at my daughter’s daycare. I got her Easter gifts packaged up in a pastel-coloured basket. And of course, we did the Easter Egg hunt around the house.
That all added up, in terms of the budget, the mental load and the logistical effort of executing the to-do list. Reflecting on it, no one asked me to do this; it just felt like everyone else was doing it, so I needed to keep up.
Some readers of this column will celebrate Easter as a day of enormous significance in the Christian calendar. But for others, who complain about the pressure to spend, there is simple solution: don’t participate. Don’t buy the decorations, don’t give gifts, don’t set the expectation that these holidays are anything other than quality time with family, and an opportunity to overindulge in some chocolate.
Your kids will remember the time spent with them, not whether you buy Dollarama chocolate eggs instead of Lindt. The Easter basket contents will be forgotten, but the frenzied egg hunt will live in their minds forever.
This is an especially important reminder in today’s tough economic times. An ad in our local paper this week highlighted the need for donations for Easter food hampers to help those struggling with day-to-day expenses, never mind holiday extras.
The thing is, it’s not difficult to make the holidays special without spending a lot of money – think dyeing eggs at home Easter crafts (a paper plate and some construction paper can make a mean bunny!), and a full Easter dinner for the family for less than $20 total courtesy of YouTube and TikTok sensation Rebecca, from Dollar Tree Dinners.
However you choose to celebrate, I hope you and your family create new traditions that focus more on meals and memories. And that your Easter basket not only generates views, but smiles from the people who matter most: your kids.
Erin Bury is the co-founder and chief executive officer of online estate planning platform Willful.co. She lives in rural Ontario with her husband and two young children.
