Easter Time!

It’s Easter time! When we were kids, a part of that meant the end of lent and time to eat all the chocolate the Easter bunny left. The best part of the basket was the super tall chocolate bunny, and some of your Easter prayers were spent praying that the bunny was solid chocolate. When you bit the tip of the ears it seemed solid, so you assumed your prayers were answered and you’d be nibbling on that big bunny for weeks! But then when you bit lower on his ear the whole bunny collapsed in on itself, revealing that it was just false hopes and a hallow facade. So sad to see your bunny implode in on himself. In the green plastic grass you found redemption in your solid chocolate footballs! Only to be in the most excruciating pain when you bit into it thinking it was unwrapped, but then you realized some of the foil wrapper was slightly embedded into the chocolate and you just bit down with your fillings onto foil! At that young point in your life you first discovered what shooting toothache pain feels like. We also had those pastel colored Necco wafers and multi-colored jelly beans we weren’t sure were spicy or sweet, but we were always willing to bite into them to see! The best part of the basket was when you fished and fished through the plastic grass for candy, but then when you were convinced there was nothing left you lifted up the plastic grass and low and behold a glorious football and two jelly beans would drop out! It was always an Easter miracle! Then when you were the parent hiding eggs for your kids, you always thought you were so clever hiding them in tough spots…until you found them 6 months later melted and misshapen. You were too clever for yourself! Back in the 70’s, when you sat on Santa’s lap you expected a normal sized jovial man with white hair and beard. But the life-sized bunny costumes on a low budget and limited materials back then were a cross between a scary, insane prison escapee and a large bunny face that was frozen in anger. Nobody wanted to stay up late to see that enter their house. There were no threats to go to bed early like there were for the Christmas season because literally nobody dared to stay up late to glimpse psycho bunny. We just mentally pretended it was an actual cute bunny hopping around, and not the life-sized nightmare posing at malls. Plus a lot of kids gave up chocolate for lent and they didn’t want to risk being seen staying up late and jeopardizing their opportunity to have a magical basket of chocolate appear that they were deprived of for 40 long days. In kid terms, 40 days is like 4 years. The fact that people, including adults, give up chocolate as a form of a huge sacrifice for a holy season just goes to show how revered it is, so there’s no way we as kids would do anything to endanger that! Hope you all enjoyed a little solid chocolate and have a Happy Easter!!