A two-year-old grabs plastic eggs off a lawn during an annual Easter egg hunt in Ohio. I never had it that easy. (Amy Sanchetta/Associated Press)

Easter is my favourite holiday. Halloween may have the fantastical costumes and Christmas the gifts, but Easter has the best celebration of them all: the Easter egg hunt.

For most families, the Easter egg hunt is a child-only activity, involving a few chocolate treats furtively but obviously placed in planters, on bookshelves and behind objects on side tables.

Not my family. My sister, brother and I used to awake Sunday morning to my father, his face awash in a devilish grin as he sent us on a wild chocolate chase.

He would sip his morning coffee as he watched his three bleary-eyed children sift through the house in an exhaustive search that often turned up more dust bunnies than chocolate ones.

Treats were taped under the reclining chair, eggs were slipped between stacked pots in dusty back corners of cabinets and thin boxed chocolate rabbits were wedged under the kitchen island in such a way that to a searching hand it felt like part of the counter's underside.

Sometimes the search went on for hours, at which point my father would give into our desperate pleas and provide vague clues. "You're cold, you're very cold," he would say laughing, or, "You're getting warmer. Oh, boiling hot!"

Even the few years when I was back in my parent's Manitoba home for the holiday as an adult, I was subjected to the hunt.

But even when I'm away from my hometown, it's a tradition that has stuck with me. My university roommates will recall the year I worked at Laura Secord and hid a chocolate treat for each of them. The hiding spots didn't do my father's evil genius justice, but there were still bunnies taped to ceiling fans and tucked between piled-up newspapers.

To be honest, the devilish egg hunt isn't the only reason Easter remains my favourite holiday. (The chocolate reward at the end helps.) It's also the time when I'm guaranteed to receive my favourite package of the year - a freshly homemade Mennonite Paska (a sweet, eggy bread coated in icing and sprinkles that looks like this) baked by my maternal grandmother and sent by express mail. Of course, in keeping with tradition, she usually hides a few eggs in the tissue wrapped around the bread.

In my family, I wouldn't expect it any other way.

What weird Easter traditions have you inherited? Are there any family traditions you decided to give up?