Easter, for me

I like Easter for the colors and bunnies and new life.  I like colorful Easter baskets filled with phony green grass, squishy yellow Peeps, and plastic eggs filled with candy.  I like happy toddlers searching for pastel Easter eggs left by the big bunny who laid them.  (What?!) 

Not normally one for kitsch of any kind, I tolerate Easter kitsch because… well, that’s Easter. 

When the kids were little, we colored eggs, they woke up to Easter baskets filled with goodies, and they hunted for Easter eggs, followed by a delicious Easter brunch.  It was all fun and joyous.  But in spite of the fact that Tom grew up Catholic, we never connected these festivities with any religious story.  Instead, Easter was just a fun, colorful, delicious holiday.

I understand that many people feel differently about this, but this is my blog, so I’ll tell you what I think (what a novel idea!). 

As a kid, the idea of someone having been nailed by his hands and feet to a wooden cross, bleeding, suffering, and ridiculed… and when he finally died, his body being sealed in a stone crypt -- and then this guy somehow coming back to life and "escaping" absolutely TERRIFIED me. 

Even as a kid I knew that after what he’d gone through, he wouldn’t stand there, three days later, in starched white robes, all handsome and washed, no blood to be found, ready to greet the day.

Not so much now, because I know the whole story is a parable, but as a kid the story of Jesus coming back from the dead brought about the same imagery as that of another holiday.

And it scared the living daylights out of me.

Then, seven years ago on Easter morning my mom died.  That didn’t exactly help the whole Easter and death thing.

I’ll stick with Easter bunny kitsch and new life, thankyouverymuch. 

Maybe that’s why I’ve been doing so much of this lately: