Easter & Passover Insights

With the winter holidays behind us, spring welcomes two unique celebrations: Easter and Passover. While the former is one of the most important holidays for the Christian faith, and the latter a key Jewish holiday, today both are steeped in modernity and popular culture as well as tradition.

In this report:

Easter insights & trends

79% of people celebrate Easter. Like Christmas, the holiday has expanded to include non-religious celebrations and traditions including egg coloring, egg hunts, and visits by the Easter Bunny.

Easter timing and search interest

Easter’s exact date changes every year, falling anywhere between March 22 and April 25. Why? It’s a little complicated, but fascinating. Religious tradition places the Spring Equinox on March 21 (whether or not it actually falls on that date). The first full moon after that date is called the Paschal full moon, and Easter is the first Sunday after that full moon.

In 2020, the Paschal full moon is April 7, so Easter falls on Sunday, April 12.

Google search interest for the holiday starts to spike in the days leading up to the holiday while AdThrive publishers’ Easter content starts seeing a boost in traffic in the month ahead of Easter, with a larger surge in traffic the week prior to Easter. It’s worth promoting your Easter content well in advance of the actual holiday weekend!

Easter gifts & shopping trends

The average celebrator plans on spending $151 on Easter. Of the 21% that don’t plan on celebrating Easter, 48% still plan to shop Easter-related sales. Overall in 2019, total Easter-related spending reached $18.11 billion!¹

The majority of Easter spending centers around tradition¹, so you should have good luck with content and affiliate marketing related to Easter nostalgia. Tap into those tradition-focused dollars!

Easter food content insights

Lots of people celebrate Easter with a brunch or dinner. Among those who celebrate Easter, 58% will cook a holiday meal.²Share your menu inspiration for their festive meals!

Brunch and dinner menu ideas: People are looking for delicious Easter side dishes (like salads, rice dishes, and vegetables like carrots and asparagus), appetizers and snacks (like deviled eggs, popcorn, and snack mixes), and main course recipes for ham, lamb, and chicken.

Looking for something different? Traditions vary around the world, so if you’re seeking out something new this year, check out some of these interesting celebratory meals from other countries.

Treats & desserts: Holidays are a great excuse to indulge the sweet tooth, and Easter recipes are no exception. Bonus points for recipes that incorporate Easter imagery — baskets, bunnies, lambs, etc.

Popular Easter treat and dessert content:

Cookies
Easter treats
Cake
Cupcakes
Rice Krispies
Hot cross buns and other sweet breads

Candy: a popular staple in kids’ Easter baskets and/or reward for hunting Easter eggs. Easter is the second best-selling candy holiday in America, after Halloween.⁶ Even those who don’t celebrate Easter love buying the candy! 33% of non-celebrators plan on purchasing something sweet for themselves or friends.¹

When it comes to candy, people are specifically interested in chocolate! Whether it’s chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies, white chocolate, or dark chocolate, people love chocolate during Easter! In fact, #chocolate is one of the most popular Easter hashtags.³

Other popular Easter candy includes jelly beans, peanut butter cups, and Peeps. One study asked adults to rank their favorite Easter candy⁴:

32% prefer Reese’s Peanut Butter Chocolate Eggs
17% prefer Cadbury Eggs
16% prefer jelly beans
10% prefer chocolate bunnies
6% prefer Peeps

Easter activities & crafts

Parties & celebrations: 57% of people plan to celebrate Easter by visiting with friends and family.¹

People are looking for ideas for⁵:

Invites
Decorations
Games
Menu ideas

Easter egg hunt: 32% of celebrators will be participating in an Easter hunt.¹ Some people will host one with their friends and family while others will attend local community egg hunts. People are always looking for fun new ways to do an egg hunt, so share all your tips and tricks!

Share ideas for:

Designing the perfect egg hunt
What to fill the eggs with
Games to incorporate into the egg hunt
Adult Easter egg hunt ideas — the fun is not just for the kids!

Want some other egg game activity inspiration? Some other popular egg games include egg rolling, egg tapping, and egg dances!

Easter egg coloring: People have been decorating eggs since the 13th century!⁶In fact, 180 million eggs a year are decorated for Easter. People love to try new techniques and ideas for this year’s batch of eggs!

Popular Easter egg searches and content⁵:

Easter egg designs
DIY / homemade egg dye — traditional and new/creative options
Food coloring egg dye
Shaving cream egg dye
Natural dye alternatives

Pop culture keyword themes for decorating Easter eggs include popular video games and movies⁸:

Captain Marvel
Toy Story
Red Dead Redemption
Spider Man
Disney
Frozen

When people are done dying their eggs, a popular search query is how to remove the dye from their hands! Have a solution?

Kids craft ideas: Teachers and parents are seeking out ideas for fun crafts to do with the little ones. Think about ideas for decorations, DIY gifts, cards, or a fun way to incorporate the story of Easter.

Printables are always a hit. For Easter, coloring pages, worksheets, and paper crafts are especially popular printables.

Don’t forget carrots for the Easter bunny! Carrots are a popular food to put out for the Easter Bunny. Do you have any fun, creative carrot ideas?

Popular imagery to incorporate: Easter is about rebirth so, when thinking about imagery, incorporate young animals such as chicks, bunnies, and lambs, as well as nests and eggs as inspiration for crafts, food, and decorations. Carrots, too!

Easter and spring decor trends

People love to get into the spirit by decorating their homes, so Easter wreaths, garland, baskets, and general themed home decor are popular at this time.

Table decorations: People are seeking out inspirations for their Easter brunch or Easter party tables. Readers are eager for ideas for their Easter tablescapes and Easter centerpieces.

Easter gardens: In warmer weather, people are excited to bring the festivities outdoors whether that be hosting an Easter garden party, organizing an egg hunt outside, or incorporating Easter yard decorations.

Passover insights and trends

Passover, the week-long holiday celebrating the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, is a major holiday for Judaism and has deep associations with traditions and food. It is, in fact, the most celebrated Jewish holiday — celebrated by more Jews than Yom Kippur or Chanukah.¹⁰

Passover timing and search interest

In 2020, Passover will begin at sundown on Wednesday, April 8 and end Thursday, April 16. Common traditions include a Seder plate with symbolic foods, a reading of the “four questions”, and a hunt for hidden afikoman (broken piece of matzah).

Google searches for Passover spike on the first day of Passover and then start declining over the course of the holiday week. AdThrive publishers’ content sees higher traffic during the days leading up to Passover, spiking on the second day of the holiday week.¹³

Passover food insights

A lot of the top queries for Passover center around food. One of the top search queries is “kosher for Passover”. People are seeking out Passover recipes, meals, desserts, feast, and “seder recipes”.⁵

Those observing the holiday abstain from eating food with “chametz” (foods that are leavened) during the 8 days of Passover. This includes anything made with wheat, rye, barley, oats, or spelt. Some will avoid eating legumes as well.

Popular Passover recipe searches⁵:

Matzo (also spelled as matzah or matza) recipes
Gefilte fish
Rice and beans
Passover desserts
Charoset
Matzo kugel
Beef brisket

People are also looking for creative takes on traditional meals as well as incorporating international flavors⁹:

Matzo ball soup with Japanese and Mexican twists such as matzo ball pozole and ramen
Wakame, a healthy and salty seaweed (searches are up 37% year-over-year)
Vegetarian and vegan alternatives (roasted beets are a popular alternative to the traditional shank bone)
Gluten substitutes (e.g., substitutes for noodles, bread, pizza, etc.)

Seder content insights

Seder, meaning “order” in Hebrew, refers to the 15 steps of a ritual that started thousands of years ago. The Seder meal helps usher in Passover. Over 90% of all Jews in the U.S. buy Passover items and/or participate in a Seder meal; that equates to $1.3 billion of the $12 billion kosher food market.

The ritual includes a Seder plate, four cups of wine, as well as readings from the Haggadah, a Jewish text that includes prayers, excerpts of the Passover story, and songs. The story of the exodus from Egypt is read aloud and rituals that correspond to parts of the story are performed.

The Seder plate includes symbolic foods:

Matzo
Bitter herbs
Egg
Lamb shankbone
Charoset or haroset (mixture of fruit, nuts, and wine)
Karpas (greens, often parsley)

Reading of the Four Questions

During the Seder meal, the youngest child will recite the four questions, which ask what makes this night different from all other nights.

Hunt for the “afikomen”

Children will search for a piece of matzo that is hidden around the house. The person who discovers it is rewarded with a prize or money. Content opportunity: share ideas for the prize!

Passover parenting & teaching content

Outside of food, people are seeking out Passover ideas for children. Content that includes ideas for activities, ways to tell the Passover story, and fun Passover-related crafts for kids is helpful to parents and teachers looking to convey the importance of the holiday to their children.

For those who celebrate, we wish you a happy Easter and Passover and we hope these content insights are helpful. As always, we’re here if you have any questions!

Sources:

NRF, 2019
Food Institute, 2018
The Drum, 2019
RetailMeNot, 2019
AdThrive, Google Trends & SEMrush Data, 2019
History Channel, 2019
CNN, 2015
SEMrush Data, 2019
Times of Israel, 2019
PEW Research, 2014
USA Today, 2019
Impact Group, 2019
Google Trends, 2019