Easter is just around the corner, with the spring celebration falling on Sunday March 27 this year .

The long bank holiday weekend begins on Good Friday (March 25), and Easter Monday (March 28) is the final day in the bank holiday festivities.

And although you're probably getting excited about your Easter eggs and your time off work, there are some things about the springtime holiday you won't likely know about.

So here are 18 fun facts about Easter... If you have any more please do let us know in the comments!

18 fun facts about Easter:

1. Every child in the UK receives an average of 8.8 Easter eggs every year - double their recommended calorie intake for a whole week.

2. The largest ever Easter egg hunt was in Florida, where 9,753 children searched for 501,000 eggs.

3. In 2007, an Easter egg covered in diamonds sold for almost £9 million. Every hour, a cockerel made of jewels pops up from the top of the Faberge egg, flaps its wings four times, nods its head three times and makes a crowing noise. The gold-and-pink enamel egg was made by the Russian royal family as an engagement gift for French aristocrat Baron Edouard de Rothschild.

4. When people gorge on a chocolate Easter bunny, 76% bite off the ears first, 5% go for the feet and 4% opt for the tail.

READ MORE:Recipes for the best roast lamb and all the trimmings for Easter Sunday

5. With all those eggs and other chocolate treats for family, relatives, loved ones and friends, it should be no surprise that households spend an average of £75 on Easter each year.

6. In the USA, 90 million chocolate bunnies and 91.4 billion eggs are produced each year. At Easter, Americans also consume more than 16 million jellybeans used to fill the hollow centre of Easter eggs, and that's enough to circle the globe three times over.

7. The White House hosts an Easter Egg Roll on the front lawn each year.

8. Sales at Easter time make up 10% of UK chocolate spending for the whole year.

9. The UK's first chocolate egg was produced in 1873 by Fry's of Bristol.

10. The tallest chocolate Easter egg was made in Italy in 2011. Standing 10.39 metres tall and weighing 7,200 kg, it was taller than a giraffe and heavier than an elephant.

11. In 2012, London's Covent Garden hosted the world's biggest-ever Easter egg hunt .

12. The world's most popular egg-shaped chocolate is Cadbury's Creme Egg.

13. On Easter Sunday in Scotland and North-East England, some people have great fun rolling painted eggs down steep hills. This is also popular in parts of America, where people push the egg along with a spoon.

14. Temptation can be too much and 43% of kids say they eat their first chocolate egg before Easter Sunday, but the average time for children to eat their first Easter egg is 11am on Easter Sunday morning.

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15. Almost one in five children (19 per cent) say they've made themselves ill by eating too much chocolate over the Easter holidays.

16. The name Easter owes its origin to Eostre or Eastre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of light and the dawn who was honoured at pagan festivals celebrating the arrival of spring.

17. In medieval times, a festival of egg throwing was held in church, when the priest would throw a hard-boiled egg to one of the choirboys. It was then tossed from one choirboy to the next and whoever held the egg when the clock struck 12 was the winner and could keep it.

18. The custom of giving eggs at Easter has been traced back to Egyptians, Persians, Gauls, Greeks and Romans, for whom the egg was a symbol of life.

Why not try some fun baking recipes out with your children this Easter?