Easter Monday 2024

Easter Monday is the second day of Eastertide – the most important time in the Christian calendar, observed on March or April, depending on the March equinox. The day can also be called “Bright Monday” or “Renewal Monday”, and different Christian denominations around the world in different countries celebrate it in a variety of ways. In the United Kingdom, Easter Monday is a bank holiday in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but not in Scotland.

Easter is a special time for most Christians – it is the time of commemorating Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. For this reason, some special church services and liturgies take place on Easter Monday. In the three countries of the United Kingdom in which the day is a bank holiday, people do not go to work or school, most shops and businesses are closed. For the non-Christians, Easter Monday is a pleasant additional day of the weekend – a great occasion to visit family and friends, or simply enjoy the beginning of spring in the park.

There are some interesting Easter Monday customs in the United Kingdom. Some places hold egg rolling competitions, Easter bonnet parades or traditional Morris dance displays. In the West Yorkshire town of Gawthorpe, for instance, every Easter Monday a special competition can be observed. The event is called the Gawthorpe World Coal Carrying Championships, and as the name indicates, it tests how quickly competitors are able to run a mile carrying a 50-pound sack of coal.

One more Easter Monday competition can be observed in Leicestershire, where a bottle-kicking match between two villages is annually played. The custom might have its roots even in the pre-Christian times. The event starts with a parade through the Medbourne and Hallaton villages. An obligatory element of the parade is a hare pie and three “bottles”- which are actually wooden kegs or barrels, two of which are filled with beer. Although there are nearly no rules to the bottle-kicking, the main goal of both teams is to move the bottles over various obstacles across two streams a mile apart. The prize, however, is worth the effort – the winning team can take the filled barrels to the local pub.

Did you know?

Easter Monday may have something in common with the medieval festival of Hocktide – a two-day festival taking place on Monday and Tuesday after Easter. It is said that on Monday men used to tie up women and did not let them go until they received a kiss.