Easter Egg Hunt

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• April 4, 2015

“You’re going to die a horrible death, remember.  It’s all good training, and you’ll enjoy it more if you keep the facts in mind.  Take your dying with some seriousness, however.  Laughing on the way to your execution is not generally understood by less advanced lifeforms, and they’ll call you crazy.” –From Illusions, The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, by Richard Bach

I’m not sure I ever really believed in the Easter Bunny.  Santa, sure, that just makes sense.  But the Easter Bunny?  Even as a kid, I thought the idea was not only absurd, but a little bit creepy.  Still, on Easter morning, there was always a basket for me and my two siblings, sitting on the table.  The basket usually contained a toy, and our favorite treats.  My Mom has a gift for artistic flare, and it always seemed like her doing, instead of a giant bunny without opposable thumbs.

I played along.  Keep in mind my family is religious.  I, too, was religious back then.  It seemed to me that Christmas was THE holiday.  But for Catholic’s, Easter is as equally as important as Christmas (if not, more so).  Though Christmas is so much cooler.  So “they” tried to amp it up a bit to get kids excited about Easter.

I liked Easter.  Not for it’s religious aspects, and not for the Peeps either.  I liked it simply because it meant Spring was here.  Spring meant summer was around the corner.  I was always happiest in the summer.

Easter brought out the worst in my family.  Well, not my whole family, just my brother and sister.  My family is fiercely competitive.  We love each other, but if you saw us playing a game, you’d think we were the Lannisters and the Starks (Game of Thrones reference).  My brother and sister were notoriously ruthless when it came to Easter egg hunting.  My sister was always the best.  I think this was partly because she was the oldest and the tallest.  Every Easter there would be moments when my siblings would both spot a colored round object in the distance. They’d look at each other.  Then, they’d run.  They played dirty.  They threw elbows.  Tried pushing each other to the floor.  Anything to be the first to the egg.  I remember watching them, and sighing, exchanging glances with my Mom as if to say, “children, am I right?”

While I’ve also been known to be an asshole in competitive sports, Easter egg hunting was just never something I took seriously.  I already had a basket with a stuffed bunny to snuggle with, and enough Peeps to last the rest of the month.  I was perfectly content skipping around the backyard and/or house enjoying Easter for what it was… a week off from school.

I don’t recall ever really enjoying going to church, especially when we had to dress up for it.  Actually, I preferred Palm Sunday Mass to Easter Mass, only because they gave you palm leaves, and it was acceptable to play with these leaves during the ceremony, creating crosses with them.  I believed in Jesus and God, and I was thankful for my dopey brother and sister, and my parents who pretended our house had been invaded by an over-sized rodent, even though there wasn’t a door or a window that wasn’t connected to an alarm.  So after receiving communion, I knelt down, clasped my fingers, and thanked God up above for my family, and summer vacations.

Everything was/is/always will be about winning.  Grades were about winning.  Sports were about winning.  Games we made up were about winning.  Life was (is) about winning.  Not Easter.  Because Jesus died.  Jesus died a gruesome death.  I was reminded every Sunday, when I looked up at the wooden statue in our parish of Jesus nailed to the cross.  Actually, there was enough Catholic propaganda in our home to remind me multiple times a day: Jesus lost.  The son of GOD fucking lost.  But on Easter, he emerged from him tomb.  He came back.  He might as well risen from the grave holding his middle fingers up, laughing, blasting Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping.”  You’re never going to bring me down. 

My parents didn’t hide the colored hard boiled eggs, fearing one might be forgotten and rot in it’s hiding place.  Or worse, one of their clumsy children would step on one, smashing it in to their pristine carpet.  It was all plastic eggs.  We preferred this.  Mostly because what was inside the egg wasn’t an egg, it was candy (or sometimes, money!).  My brother is the youngest, and was the worst at finding eggs (though I’m sure he’d disagree with me to this day).  My Mom often gave him hints to find an egg or two, as he was easily frustrated if he went more than 60 seconds without a find.  In the end, we counted our eggs to see who “won.”  It was close every year.  Lisa won, usually, but I think my brother and I both had a couple wins in there.  Then, we’d open all the plastic eggs for our prize.  Peeps, cadbury eggs, a dollar, M&M’s, temporary tattoos, who knows what joys these china made egg shaped plastic toys contained (we usually knew).

We spent the rest of the day with family, sometimes there was a second Easter egg hunt with our cousins, after we went to church.  And we’d eat so much sugar.  So much sugar, until we literally could not eat any more sugar.

Catholicism is an overwhelming religion, filled with a lot of great stories that are supposed to bring reason and hope to it’s believers.  The meaning of Easter, from what I gathered as a child, was Jesus’s victory over the ultimate loss: Death.  His resurrection gave promise to his loyal followers that there is life after death.  Most importantly, it made him famous.  For if he hadn’t returned, he would have just been another prophet who died.  Another prophet who lost.  Jesus remains the most famous person ever to have lived (or been made up) because of Easter.

However, Easter did not originate from Christianity.  Like many holidays, it was stolen from the Pagans.  It is the celebration of re-birth, aka, Spring.  Life from death.  The word “Easter” derived from “Eastre,” the name of a goddess associated with Spring.  Bare trees to green leaves.  Desolate fields to grass covered wonderland’s occupied by bunnies.  Long periods of darkness cast away by light.  The true meaning of Easter is simply the circle of life.

So… You’re eight years old, and you get excited when you pluck a neon colored egg hidden in a plant.  An egg, which is literally a symbol for new life.  Gently, you place the egg in your basket, and pivot your feet and search the area for the next one.  The Easter Egg Hunt is all there is right now.  You’re smiling.  Because it’s a game.  It’s fun.  It doesn’t matter if you lose.  Because the sun is shining, and Spring is here.  You’re too young to know that you understand the meaning of Easter better than the adults.  Because they’re still caught in an Easter Egg Hunt.  They’re still looking for symbols of meaning in their lives.  There is none.  There’s life and death.  Might as well enjoy the game while you’re still in it.