Easter means different things to different people, depending on your upbringing.

For many here, it means dressing up in your finest and attending church. Then, coming home to a traditional meal of ham or lamb with family, which would be followed by an Easter egg hunt for the youngest members of the family. Followed by deviled eggs for days.

However, that is not everyone’s Easter experience. While many youngsters wake up to an Easter basket filled with tons of candy and some type of special meal and an Easter egg hunt, their day does not include attending church.

Such was my experience growing up. My mother and stepfather were not churchgoers. To be blunt, but honest about it, that decision was rooted more in laziness than any else.

Nonetheless, as a child, I was very curious about going to church, had lots of friends who went with their families every week, and I wanted to go. One of the Baptist churches in Natchez started a bus ministry, which provided me with my chance to go to church, and go I did. I loved it, relished it! Was in church every time the door opened. If the bus didn’t run, I’d get a ride.

Ironically, I also went to church most every week with my Catholic next-door neighbors — an older, Italian couple — who went to anticipated mass on Saturdays.

For years, starting at about age 8, I went to mass on Saturdays and Baptist church on Sundays. It was something that made my non-churchgoing mother very uncomfortable. But it provided me with a pretty awesome religious education and a unique understanding and tolerance of the different things people believe.

Because of that, Easter took on a different meaning for me, as I grew older, than it did for the rest of my immediate family.

Regardless of your religious beliefs or lack thereof, I hope Easter can serve as a reawakening for you.

Years ago, I heard Barbara Walters during an interview with Bill Gates ask him if he believed in God. Gates answered by saying he didn’t know for certain exactly what he believed — said it was something he was still working out for himself — but he believed in religious values and he and his wife were working to instill those in their children.

I think most decent human beings, regardless of religion or whether they have a belief in or a relationship with God, think the values taught by most religions are worthy of practice by us all — kindness, understanding, love, charity, honesty.

Perhaps we all need to spend a little more time on tolerance. One of the things I took from the Baptist part of my religious education is that you shouldn’t force your particular beliefs on others. Individuals must come to their beliefs of their own free will. Baptists believe in sharing their testimony and spreading the Gospel, of course. But key to the faith, at least how I learned it, is that a person must come to a personal decision.

We don’t all have to believe the same things, or worship in the same ways. Let’s face it: That’s just not going to happen. But we can all embrace those core values.

Doing so would make the world such a better place for all of us.

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Jan Griffey is editor of The Vicksburg Post. You may reach her at jan.griffey@vicksburgpost.com. Readers are invited to submit their opinions for publication.