April 21st: Easter Monday

Countries have their own Easter customs - but there are some which crop up in several different places throughout the world, so here are 10 common Easter customs.

1. Easter is a religious festival, so naturally many of the customs revolve around church services. Often these start late in the evening and finish at around 3am, when people go home for a big celebratory breakfast. In Ethiopia, this consists of sourdough bread cur by the priest or the head of the family. In Greece they eat lamb's stomach soup.
2. A common tradition in many places is to visit seven different churches in their local area during the Easter period.
3. Egg cracking games: like conkers with Eggs. Everyone gets an egg, hard boiled and usually painted in bright colours. Then people crack their eggs together until only one egg is left intact. The person holding that egg is the winner, and will be lucky all year.
4. Eggs feature in virtually every Easter celebration as a symbol of spring, new life and fertility. Egg hunts, egg rolling, egg painting or simply giving them as gifts. In Greece people carry around a brightly coloured egg on Easter Sunday. When they meet another person they knock their eggs together and say, "Christ is risen".
5. Rabbits are a common symbol too, although in Australia they prefer a native animal called a bilby, because to the Australians, rabbits are nasty pests.
6. Water games: many countries have traditions involving water, from throwing people in to spraying each other. In Poland they say that any girl who is caught and soaked with water will marry within the year.
7. Many countries also have a tradition of men whipping their wives and girlfriends - playfully nowadays, with a small willow branch. Sometimes the women get to return the favour the following day. In some places this has evolved to picking small branches and tapping people with them for luck.
8. Parades, passion plays and re-enactments of the events of the first Easter are common. In the Philippines they go so far as to attach people to crosses with actual nails. People seem more than happy to submit themselves to this in gratitude to God or to atone for their sins.
9. Feasts and family meals are held to celebrate the end of Lent, during which time people will have abstained from eating meat and dairy products. In Haux, France, they make huge omelettes. In Colombia traditional Easter fare is turtles, Iguanas and large rodents. In parts of Ireland, there are mock funerals of herrings, which were the only food many people were allowed to eat in Lent, so by Easter they were thoroughly sick of them!
10. In some places you might be forgiven for thinking you've landed in Halloween! In Gerona, men dressed as skeletons dance in the streets, and in Finland, children dress up as witches and go from door to door begging for sweets.