Easter Traditions

Well, it's Easter weekend.

As I think about the holiday, many thoughts go through my head: traditions, the true meaning of Easter, bunnies and eggs. I think about what I know, what I don't know, what I remember from my childhood and what Easter means for me and my family today.

Let's get one thing out of the way-for me, Easter has always been about magical bunnies and hunting for delicious eggs. I know it's supposed to have deep religious meaning, but the reality is my family never paid a whole lot of attention to that when I was a kid and I'm not crazy enough to think I could teach those lessons to my own kids. At best, I might tell my kids that Easter isn't supposed to be about the eggs, it's about Easter bunnies that died for our sins...you get the idea. Please don't judge me.

I mentioned delicious eggs. Perhaps this was a bit of a stretch. The eggs we searched for were hollow and about the size of a child's palm. Inside they were white, outside they were coated with what felt and tasted like sugared wax. Their nutritional equivalent would be a burnt candle wick. I didn't like the taste of the eggs and even then realized that what I was eating was really, really bad for me.

But we didn't care.

We turned the house upside down looking for those eggs and celebrated our full baskets of these barely edible science experiments.

We also got a chocolate bunny. Sometimes he was solid chocolate and smaller, sometimes he was hollow and much, much bigger. The solid chocolate bunnies required all of your bite strength to bite off their heads and the larger bunnies had yellow eye balls made of icing. I wondered if any child looked forward to eating yellow icing bunny eye balls, especially with so much chocolate otherwise?

I don't remember how old I was when I no longer believed in the Easter bunny, but I remember the year I was determined to catch him in the act. I was allowed to sleep on the floor downstairs and after hours of willing myself to stay awake (I may or may not have had a net), my mission failed and I woke up in the morning, surrounded by multi-coloured reminders that I wasn't ready for the big-time.

It's nice to see my own kids get excited at Easter. They rush down the stairs and begin their search for eggs before their eyes are open. My daughter is old enough to find some eggs for herself, then help her brother find some for him.

I think we got the hollow bunnies for them this year.

Remind me to ask the yellow eye ball question.