There is a barely a mention of Easter in the early days of the Bremen Enquirer. It appears to have been a quiet, religious affair. But even the earliest mention of activities other than the bare fact of observance is, in April of 1886, of an unnamed citizen laying out eggs for an Easter egg hunt, a tradition that has outlasted egg rolls and Easter hats. Easter has had many traditions, both religious and secular, throughout Bremen’s history.
Actually egg rolling seems never to have caught on here. But by 1889, we find Easter poems and stories from a content syndicate in the paper. The first mention of Easter bonnets is in an 1890 story; milliners didn’t start to capitalize on the holiday until the 1910s.
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The idea of Easter parades was mentioned here and there, but they don’t seem to have been a thing in Bremen beyond the idea of wearing new clothes to Sunday services that week.
In 1934, the National Society for Crippled Children struck upon the idea of selling its own stamp-like stickers called “Easter seals” to raise funds and was so successful that the organization changed its name to “Easter Seals”. Indiana organized a branch in 1944.
Churches began to advertise special Easter services in the 1900s, but it didn’t become common until the war years of the 1940s—alongside ads for Easter candy. Churches would ban together for “union services” at Easter. At the same time, the American Legion began sponsoring public egg hunts with cash prizes. Birkey’s Hatchery even offered chicks dyed in rainbow colors.
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Easter celebrations were tempered in 1965 after the Palm Sunday tornado outbreak the week before. Nevertheless, the many varied traditions of Easter have largely continued to this day to one degree or another.
Not dyed chicks from Birkey’s Hatchery, mind you, but most of the others.
Historic Bremen 
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