Can So. Utahns Even Afford Easter This Year?

Easter may be in need of the old Christmas adage of "Remember the reason for the season," especially when you consider how commercialized (and expensive) Easter has become.

Easter is about the Resurrection of Jesus, but we all still love our Peeps and Easter baskets and egg dyeing. But can we afford them?

So here are a few things to consider when it comes to celebrating the secular side of Easter:

Business Insiders says we'll drop over $3 Million on Easter Candy this year. They say the breakdown is 16 Million jelly beans, 1.5 Billion peeps and 91 Million chocolate bunnies.
Filling an Easter basket can be exorbitantly expensive. The basket itself runs about five bucks, then you throw in Reese's eggs, jelly beans, a chocolate bunny and some other Easter goodies and you'll end up spending more than $30 on the Easter basket for one child. And if you have three or four kids, well, it could get really pricey.
The cheapest Easter dresses I could find were around $30, but plan on spending more than that unless you're really frugal
A dozen eggs is sitting at about five bucks here in Southern Utah, but once you have eggs or French toast for breakfast, who wants to spend 50 cents an egg just to color them? Some people do make egg salad or devilled eggs after the coloring is over.
A newish tradition for Easter has been for parents to buy kids presents, like Santa Claus at Christmas. This needs to stop! Now! Seriously, they don't need another Barbie or remote-control dune buggy. If you have to buy them something, make it useful, like a toothbrush or socks (Man, I sound old!).
One of my friends does a "jelly bean garden." The kids put jelly beans out in fake grass Easter eve, then he swaps out the beans for tootsie pops that night. I presume he eats the evidence.
A town in France (Abbeville) has an Easter tradition of making a giant omelet --- with 5,000-plus eggs. In fact, every year they add one more egg, so now they're up to 5,035. At roughly 40 cents an egg, that would cost -- gulp -- over $2,000. And I like cheese in my eggs, too.
Americans consume (or at least purchase) over a billion-and-a-half Peeps every year. There are currently about 340 million citizens in the USA, so we eat about 4.5 Peeps a person in this country (I like mine frozen).
The most popular Easter candy in Utah is ... gummies. That's right, we are one of just three states that choose gummies over Peeps, Skittles, lollipops or jelly beans (the other two are Colorado and Minnesota).

Easter weekend is always great fun, but this year it might break the bank.