From Where I Sit

By Pat Spilseth, Columnist

March winds are blowing across the lake, temperatures climbing and soon the Easter Bunny will be hopping his way to our house with a basket of eggs. Since March came in like a lion with freezing temperatures and snow, surely we Minnesotans are due for a warmer April As spring rolls around each year, you know that Easter celebrations are just around the corner. It’s a time to forget about our winter woes, focus on sunshine, green grass, pastels and getting together with family. 

When you think about it, even though many of us have seen the Easter Bunny at a local mall, a giant bunny hopping to our front door is a bizarre notion. It should have occurred to me years ago, but I never thought about it. Has anyone ever seen a bunny hopping on two hind legs carrying a basket of eggs? That’s almost as weird as a flying white stork bringing tiny babies to houses of pregnant women or a groundhog predicting when spring will arrive! What salespeople imagined this strange idea to market Easter candy and sell flowers? Why didn’t we question these ideas when we first heard them? We’re accustomed to Christians celebrating the risen Christ on Easter, the savior who died for our sins and rose again. But today the holiday is also celebrated with egg hunts, spring flowers, candy, fuzzy bunnies, new Easter outfits, straw bonnets and an Easter parade.

In my youth, buying an Easter dress, Easter bonnet, new patent leather shoes, lacy anklets and gloves was a tradition many little girls enjoyed. Usually I didn’t get a new Easter outfit, but one year Aunt Sadie sewed sweet pastel blue Easter dresses for my little sister Barbie and me. We had fresh haircuts and stood on the front steps of the jailhouse for a photo with Mom’s boxy black Brownie camera.

As a kid, I thought that decorating Easter eggs would be fun. Moms probably think differently after they’re stuck with cleaning up the mess of cracked eggs, colored dyes and messes on the table and floor. One year I persuaded Mom to dye hard boiled eggs into pink, aqua, blue and violet colors for Easter. That happened only once at my house. We tried dipping the eggs in bowls of various dyes at the kitchen table, but our results were not cute, colorful nor edible. Since nobody in our family liked to eat hard boiled eggs, after a few days sitting on the kitchen table in the sun, the eggs begin to smell rotten. They ended up in the garbage. Not even our dog would eat those eggs.

When my own kids were little, we tried having Easter egg hunts. Usually either Andy or Kate would end up crying because one got more eggs than the other in their basket. My kids were so competitive. We gave the hunt a final try when Kate was about eight and Andy five. We invited our St. Louis, Missouri, friends to join us for the holiday. To get into the spirit, Daddy Dave put on a gray and white Easter Bunny costume, with cottontail and long ears. We parents rose early on the frosty Easter morning to hide the eggs among the trees and bushes in our lawn before the kids awakened. After getting the kids into their Easter outfits so they’d be ready for church, we distributed pink, purple and yellow straw baskets to all four kids and said GO! Find the hidden eggs. Dave got the movie camera ready to roll…

It was a race to disaster.

Dressed in pink and yellow Easter dresses, winter boots and jackets, Kate and Sarah raced to the tall maple trees and bushes in our yard, where the girls had spied a pink and yellow egg. Andy saw it at the same time! Dashing to the treasure, they collided and began hitting each other with their straw baskets, fighting to claim the egg for their baskets. Eggs flew out of the baskets and scattered on the lawn still wet with dew. Kate wildly scratched Andy’s face, and his chubby cheeks turned beet red with tears of frustration. Sweet Sarah stared open-mouthed…she’d never seen such chaos, and Patrick, the youngest kid, took this fight as his chance to gather more eggs and fill his basket. Kate dove on Andy’s back, walloped him with her empty basket and snatched the prized egg! As their bellowing cries echoed through the neighborhood, their heads smacked and both started bawling.

Meanwhile, up on the deck Dave, in his warm Bunny outfit, was filming the egg hunt as kids scattered on the yard. Everybody but the kids was laughing. I had to separate the fight before someone ended up with a concussion. Already several faces were streaked with tears and bloody noses. Their new Easter outfits were ruined, torn with grass stains and blood. That was the end of Easter hunts at our house.

Personally, I haven’t given up on Easter egg hunts. It’s so much fun to hide the eggs and watch our little grandkids race to fill their baskets with eggs. I hope the weather will cooperate this year so we can have an outdoor Easter egg hunt. Think of the chaos if we had an indoor hunt with four kids, five and under, vying for the eggs!

Remember freezing in your lacy white gloves, white anklets with white Mary Jane shoes, frilly dress and Easter bonnet? Wouldn’t it be great to enjoy Easter without wool coats and ear muffs? Looking good isn’t worth goosebumps and a nose-blowing, coughing cold the next day! I’m hoping Easter will be warm this year so we can celebrate with lilies, tulips and hyacinths not only in our churches but also blooming outdoors.

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To contact Pat, email: pat.spilseth@gmail.com.