The Easter Bunny Told Me a Secret

Easter has become a big business, and with that business comes a rainbow of goods to help us enjoy the occasion. But for a holiday that takes place in the Spring, celebrating rebirth, new life, or just good weather and family, the hundreds of possible accessories just don't belong. Not only is a huge amount of waste generated for this one day out of a year - at best it's a 3 day occasion - the excess and commercialism goes against the basic reasons for the holiday.

Surely the Easter Bunny wouldn't approve of more trash in the landfill and this emphasis on stuff rather than being with family and enjoying the weather. In fact, I had a theoretical chat with him and he told me so. If your family celebrates the day with a religious tradition, take a look around the Easter section and ask if all of this is what Jesus would have wanted his celebrating his resurrection to incorporate. Even in families where a religious tradition is not observed, giving a more secular celebratory function, some restraint should be used for the first major holiday of spring.

Of the huge amounts of goods produced for Easter, many are destined for the trash. While it's true that this can be said of Halloween and Valentine's Day, those items are not quite so idiosyncratic. Gooey gross candies relate to the irreverent fun and thrill of braving the dark each year at Halloween. Kitschy hearts and plush toys are a way to show affection on Valentine' Day. What does buying a huge plastic basket, filled with plastic grass, candy, and, often lately, full size toys have to do with Easter? And we all know that the Easter figurines, decorations, and various tchotchkes will eventually end up in a box, given away, or thrown out. That's assuming they weren't meant to be disposable in the first place.

Last year my daughter's preschool asked each parent to send a dozen plastic eggs and a suggested kind of filler - stickers, small toys, etc. We participated and she came home with a good haul of prize-filled eggs. I wondered how much different the group experience would have been if the kids had helped decorate real eggs to take pride in, instead of choosing the shiniest, prettiest items off the store shelves. As soon as the goodies were emptied and cooed over the excitement was over. The experience, like the plastic eggs, was empty.

The eggs went into her toy box and became part of her play. Then they became cat toys. Then the split halves began migrating to the kitchen, the bathtub, and under the couch, and four months later we were still hunting down those Easter eggs. I salvaged the ones that could be put back together but halves who lost their mates went in the trash. The stickers had long since been used up, the candy devoured, and most of the small toys had lost their novelty.

This year I'm letting my daughter know that the Easter bunny told me this secret: he prefers to hide the real, hand colored eggs. The plastic kind leave a bad taste in his mouth while hiding them, and he's concerned about the candy ones and his teeth. He would especially like it if we decorated with real flowers and handmade crafts. And he says he likes that she dresses up, but very dressy clothes don't go so well with picnics and chocolate bunnies, and he finds it easier to frolic outside without them. When the inevitable request for a real bunny comes, I'm going to show her Heifer.org, where we can purchase a trio of bunnies, or bunnies and chicks, for a family in a developing world. He would really like it if every family thinking about buying a bunny as an Easter gift would do that instead or additionally. He also wants her, and all of us, to remember that this is a holiday about celebrating rebirth and the return of spring (with that the return of a green, beautiful world), not another holiday of pomp, candy and consuming (buying and eating) more than we need.