Nancy Williams: Easter confusion over bunnies, Bible and baskets
Saw a funny card. Said since Easter is on April Fool’s Day this year, let’s have the kids find Easter eggs we didn’t hide. I laughed.
If you’ve been that parent who was scrambling to do the middle-of-the-night bunny delivery, you get it. A friend who was with me said having kids look for nonexistent eggs is cruel and would be confusing to a child.
Um … first of all, I wouldn’t really have my child look for eggs I didn’t hide. Probably. And second, Easter is pretty confusing anyway to wee ones. At least it was to my little girl mind way back then.
We dyed eggs. For a long time, I thought it was because Jesus died, we "died" eggs. Actually I dyed pretty much everything I could find that would fit in the cups of vinegar-based coloring. My mom was mostly OK with it. In the name of science. String, socks, dollar bill, dinner roll, my finger, a crayon. My imagination-lacking sister said you can’t dye a yellow crayon, it’s already colored.
My mother is largely to blame for the “just do it — action instead of talk” way I have. I’m confident other moms would have stopped the put-it-in-the-dye-and-see-what-happens rampage. Not her.
It was also an era of parents giving kids baby chicks that had been dyed, then soon died. Don’t know who had the notion to take a cute yellow chick and make it pastel pink or baby blue, but that’s what parents bought for us.
One year my mom bucked the trend and got me a little bitty turtle instead. I liked it but thought it smelled kind of funky and didn’t want the tiny aquarium with a fake palm tree in my room, so I kept it in the utility room. I recall my sister saying it wasn’t much of a life for a turtle to be in a laundry room. Yeah, never mind it’s not much of a life to be in a plastic, algae-ed up bowl, either.
It was perplexing to me that for a religious holiday meal, we ate devil-ed eggs. And why some eggs ended up as chicks (albeit it pasteled) and some ended up as deviled eggs. Who decides egg fate and based on what?
Ham was the traditional lunch entrée. A sad meat as meat goes. Taken to people’s houses when someone died. Somber to serve it for Easter lunch with eggs that didn’t make it to chickhood.
I wondered if it was only my family who carted ham to houses after a death, but recently I saw a popular ham store touting their ham as a “great source of comfort for loved ones experiencing loss.” I can honestly say ham has never comforted me during loss.
Another mystery was when mom bought us Easter outfits that included matching dresses, white gloves and white patent leather pocketbooks. We didn’t have much money, so it’s interesting there was a budgetary decision to spend money on gloves and purses we carried for a couple of hours on Easter only.
Later I saw "Breakfast at Tiffany’s" (elbow length white glove elegance) and thought perhaps mom was training us for high society. Boy, was that a big fail.
I’ve made Easter baskets for my two sons for about a hundred years. Started pretty extravagantly. Homemade treats. Notes from the bunny written in glitter. At some point, when life became harder, I took shortcuts.
When my youngest started playing baseball, I bought one of those big bags of several dozen baseballs to hide and let him find those instead of eggs. Hiding them was a blast. Very efficient. I stood on the porch and threw them in to yard, bushes and such. Epic life hack for overwhelmed mom.
When I did hide plastic eggs, I never was a fan of putting chocolate in them. If an egg was overlooked, the chocolate melted and would be icky. I put coins or other stuff in the eggs. One year I put in jokes I’d written on little strips of paper. Not well received. Won't be doing that again.
I’ve just discovered dried figs and like them. Looking at dried fruit in stores makes me feel older than anything else I’ve done lately. I’m gonna put a dried fig in some plastic eggs and hide them. If an egg gets overlooked and you find it a week later, it might still be OK. Dried fruit.
I’ve known families who didn’t do egg hunts or Easter baskets because of not wanting to dilute the message of Easter. Nothing wrong, in my humble opinion, with adding a rabbit, chocolate and a toothbrush to any occasion or event. (Toothbrushes were staples in our stockings and Easter baskets. To offset the candy.)
In fact, given that the Easter story and message is based on some pretty rough stuff, it’s not a bad idea to lighten it up a little however you can for kids. I remember being really young and frightened by the idea of people nailing a man to a tree. (Still frightens me some, to be honest.) Recently listening to the song "Driving Nails" gave me chills and tears.
And to my little girl mind, rising from a grave was scary, too. I know victory over death and all that. But so hard to understand and celebrate. A man, who is at the same time God and also God’s Son, was brutally killed for stuff he didn’t do and then came back to life.
Thankfully, in my home, if your heart was right and intent was pure, my parents thought no question or comment was disrespectful. Every topic was fair game. Easter is a complicated holiday and my parents didn’t gloss over the lack of logic. I love that they didn’t act like Easter made perfect sense. My mom, a fierce and dedicated believer, fearlessly and successfully mixed theology with bunnies, Bibles and baskets. Lilies and jelly beans, God and salvation. "Up From the Grave He Arose" was sung, then "Here Comes Peter Cottontail."
And for me, a child who thought too much, egg hunts and chocolate rabbits were well-placed distractions from the disturbing parts of the story. The serious message of Easter wasn’t any less meaningful because my mom had a grand sense of combining faith with fun.
This is the opinion of Nancy Williams, the coordinator of professional education at UNC Asheville. Contact her at nwilliam@unca.edu.
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