For as long as I can remember, I’ve always had a problem with the Easter Bunny. When I was five and finally entering an age of semi-consciousness, I recall asking my parents why this magical basket was presented to me on Easter morning. Listening to their explanation that a bunny snuck into the house in the middle of the night and delivered chocolate, plastic eggs, and some random toys that still had the price tag on them, I could feel my five-year-old brain thinking bullshit. And I didn’t even know bullshit was a word. Come on guys, you’re going to have to do better than that. A bunny?
I racked my brain for hours on the logic of the Easter Bunny. How could a bunny carry a basket? Ok, maybe if he used his teeth, but how many could he carry like that? I couldn’t envision a payload of more than three well-placed baskets. The whole premise gave me serious doubts. Santa, I had no question about. I knew that guy was legit. The magic sleigh, a bag with a never-ending supply of presents, the ability to go around the world in one night, — all of it made total sense. I still didn’t know what opposable thumbs were, but I knew that even without the magic sleigh, Santa could carry a ton of presents because the dude had hands. But the Easter Bunny? No effing way. Do I look like I do drugs? I’m five, not stupid.
It was all over for the Easter Bunny though when my parents took me to the Saint Anthony’s egg hunt. After a mad dash to hoard eggs, knocking kids out of the way in the most Christianly manner possible, I found myself sizing up the six-foot-tall bunny silently waving to all of us. Parents exclaimed “hey, look, it’s the Easter Bunny,” and began herding their children towards the massive pooka for pictures. I knew right away something was off. The fur on the suit made the Easter Bunny look way faker than any of my stuffed animals at home, and I quickly realized with disgust: that’s who everyone thinks the Easter Bunny is? That’s just somebody in a bunny suit. That was it for me. Easter was a farce.
With each passing year, I found the Easter Bunny harder and harder to reconcile. By the time I was seven, I was long past the point of believing in him, and struggled with the idea that on the day we were supposed to celebrate Jesus rising from the dead, the whole world seemed to be focused on egg hunts and dressing fancy for the neighbors. Look, my family only went to church twice a year, and going to CCD on a Wednesday night was the last place in the world I wanted to go, so it wasn’t like I had some religious axe to grind. The Easter Bunny simply just didn’t compute.
Nothing screwed with my youth and innocence like the Easter Bunny. All other fictions I readily accepted without questioning. If you told me the WWF was fake, I’d argue with you until I was blue in the face. Monsters were also definitely living in my closet, and sometimes lurking under my bed. I even bought the tooth fairy myth at first. Clearly, I was a kid ready to believe the fantastic. All I’m saying is that it seemed like the son of God defying human limitations was like, a really big deal, and not to mention, way more believable than a rabbit who was bigger than every man in town. Really, what the heck did the Easter Bunny have to do with Easter anyway?
I’ve never defended the Easter Bunny, not even to my kids. I never came out and told them that the Easter Bunny was fake, but when my three oldest came to me with formal arguments for why they didn’t think the Easter Bunny existed, I usually said “I agree with you,” leaving them absolutely stunned. This strategy actually paid significant dividends for Santa. When they questioned me about Santa I emphatically denied the possibility he didn’t exist, and would come up with elaborate stories to prove that he was real. Since I was straight up with them about the Easter Bunny, they knew I had to be telling the truth about Santa too.
At the Easter Mass we attended yesterday, the priest surprised me and made a direct assault on the Easter Bunny. He had a soft-spoken voice, but it was clear that he found the Easter Bunny distasteful, and was angry that people spend most of their energy on Easter thinking about the big bunny instead of the big man. Next to me was my eight-year-old — the only child I have left who still believes in the Easter Bunny, and has never questioned his existence. I was starting to get concerned.
As the priest’s attack continued, I honestly thought he was going to tell the children right then and there that the Easter Bunny isn’t real. I began making eyes at the priest like, come on man, not in front of the kids. I was seconds away from making the “cut” gesture when he caught a glimpse of my daughter and changed course with his homily. Thank God. It was the first time I can remember wanting to defend the Easter Bunny.
Why now? What’s changed? Maybe I missed something I didn’t see before. Or maybe because after a year of covid, I’ll be damned if something or someone is going to steal my daughter’s joy. Maybe we got the message wrong with the Easter Bunny, but if that’s the tool we have to show our kids we love them right now, I’ll go with it. A little of the fantastical to make the present more palatable, is A-OK with me.
Still, why couldn’t we have just done the same thing we did with Christmas and convert some saint into a magical gift giver? Saint Patrick’s day wasn’t too long ago — maybe instead of an egg hunt we could have a massive snake hunt, and try to get rid of all the snakes just like Saint Peter did. Wouldn’t that be fun? We could still have Easter egg hunts too, but just tell the kids they have to get to the eggs before all the snakes do. That would really spice things up. Anyway, just a thought. It would be far easier to explain than the Easter Bunny.
