Hoppin' Down The Bunny Trail

March was winding down and the warmth of spring embraced us all. I was waiting for Easter vacation and the chance to be free of school work. Easter is a weird holiday- at least it was for me. Another Jesus story wrapped up in candy and rabbit tales, but you couldn’t fool me, it was just an excuse to get us to go to church. I couldn’t have too much fun on Easter Sundays, because Mom would have us dress up in our suits to go visit our grandparents and other family members, so you couldn’t really enjoy yourself playing, ‘cause you’d get your good clothes all dirty. Lots of bored-to-death kids just standing around in stiff clothes with nothing to do.
I had had it with formal religion by now, and getting me to go to Sunday school was more trouble than it was worth, so Mom had pretty much given up trying.
The egg hunt in our living room would be the highlight of the day. Our moment of fun and then it’s dress clothes and our best behavior. No time to relax until later in the evening when we get home from visiting relatives and we can put on dungarees.
I would hope for solid chocolate rabbits in my basket. I hated coconut, but there always seemed to be a large coconut egg in there somewhere. This Easter Bunny character was no Santa Claus, that’s for sure!
Jelly beans- now whose idea were they, anyway, and what did all this have to do with Jesus getting crucified? We were supposed to be celebrating a miracle here, so why are we dyeing eggs and waiting for a rabbit to bring us candy and cellophane straw?
Jesus was kind of like all the super heroes in the comic books, you know? A misunderstood white guy with super powers battling evil. He had 12 sidekicks instead of one, and one of them couldn’t be trusted. Thing is, he knew everything that was going to happen to him, and he still goes to supper that night. He gave Ben-Hur a drink of water and healed a lot of people, and for all his good deeds he gets rewarded with a painful execution. And because of all that, a rabbit comes to our homes with baskets full of candy. No, I don’t get it. I never will. Spring, rebirth, resurrection and jelly beans, and a perfectly good day wasted, stuck in a suit of clothes.
I’d better get a solid chocolate rabbit so I can bite the ears off and enjoy that cocoa bean high. It’s a night of bad television and a reminder not to eat all our candy at once-(shades of Halloween). The good news is we get a week off from school and the weather is getting warm, so it’s outside for bike rides and playing war in the afternoon.
Another Easter goes by. We celebrate the wonder of resurrection drinking Heritage’s eggnog, eating ham and chocolate bunnies, watching Max Von Sydow and Jeffrey Hunter and other blue-eyed actors pretend to be Jesus on TV. The miracle remembered.
Mom getting me to go to Sunday school-now that would have been a miracle.