Pictures splattered on Facebook of piles of pointless presents captioned with 'My little prince/princess is so spoiled!” You said it.

Shiny new toys (toys!?), trendy new clothes (what?!) and vast arrays of chocolate eggs laid out like an artistic exhibit and photographed for the world of social media to see what a wonderful parent you really are. Hideous scenes.

What happened to the simple chocolate egg?

Is this what we’re doing now? A stack full of presents for Easter? For Easter? Because if it is, I clearly missed the memo.

My two boys each woke up on Easter Sunday to a chocolate egg to eat and a hard boiled egg to paint. Bad mum? Well if I am, feel free to phone the social. Although I don’t think so because they were delighted with their little lot.

This is something I've previously lamented, (okay, maybe I've moaned about it), how some people insist on turning every notable date in the annual calendar into an excuse to spend absurd amounts of cash on their kids - and then garishly boast about it on social networking sites.

Yawn. We’ve seen it before, barely four months ago, in fact, after Santa done his deliveries. It’s not impressive and no one cares.

I’m not even vaguely religious, but I’m pretty sure Easter Sunday is supposed to be a deeply holy day of worship and reflection, Wikipedia describes it as: “A festival and holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred on the third day of his burial after his crucifixion by Romans. It is the culmination of the Passion of Christ, preceded by Lent, a forty-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance.” Oh. So, not a universal second birthday for every child with idiotic parents determined to spend outrageous amounts of money on toys, games and clothes they don’t need, then?

And if you are one such parent and thinking “Well they’re my children I can do what I want”, you’re absolutely right. You can. But please, don’t subject the rest of us to it by using it as an opportunity to grandstand your ever-so-fabulous parenting skills.

But then, without 1,478 'friends’ to show-off to, what would be the point?

The custom of the Easter egg originated in early Christianity when eggs were stained red in memory of the blood of Christ, shed at his crucifixion. As such, for Christians, the Easter egg is a symbol of the empty tomb.

Now it’s a multi-million pound business for every one from Cadbury’s to Disney. Some of them even come with gifts packed inside. No longer do you just get a mug emblazoned with the logo of your favourite chocolate bar, now they have full crockery sets. Chocolate eggs come along with a plate, cup, bowl and spoon of any Disney character you can think of.

I was in the supermarket three days before Easter Sunday and observed some quite hysterical scenes of panic, fear, aggression and alarm as frantic egg-hunters grappled over the chocolate dregs.

Horror-stricken faces roamed the aisle looking for novelty boxed eggs which were simply not there anymore.

“They can’t have sold out of all the Malteaser eggs,” cried one.

“There’s no white chocolate eggs at all, anywhere. This is ridiculous,” ranted another. And so they went on. Up and down the aisle in simultaneous desperation and disbelief that the only options left were Smarties, Kit-Kat and Green and Blacks. Talk about a bad egg.