How to celebrate a traditional Dutch Easter

The Passion

While other Dutch Easter traditions date back centuries, this one is fairly new. Since 2011, this Dutch passion play has been held in different cities across the country and airing live on public television on Maudy Thursday. Over time the ratings for The Passion have tripled, with almost a million viewers in 2011 to almost 3 million in 2020, when the broadcast was adjusted due to the coronavirus.

The Passion is performed on a podium on a big square while a six metre long, 250 kilogram heavy, illuminated cross as carried to the square by 40 people, who are followed by a procession of at most 1000 people.

The event involves Dutch celebrities paraphrasing selected Bible passages to tell the story of Easter and Jesus, as well as live performances of relevant Dutch pop songs, while a narrator links the story of The Passion to current events and the city which serves as a stage.

Easter egg decorating

Though not only done in the Netherlands, this is done both at primary schools and at home (before they are hidden). The tradition of decorating eggs goes back to the early Christian community in Mesopotamia, who stained eggs red in the  memory of the blood of Christ.

Today’s Easter eggs tend to have more joyful decorations though. Hiding the eggs is a Germanic tradition, where eggs, which symbolised fertility, where buried in fields to transfer the fertility to the field.