Too much of a good thing?

by andrea

As a non-religious family, there is absolutely no hint of Jesus or anything Biblical in the way we celebrate Easter. The girls haven't bothered to ask "Why Easter?" so I haven't bothered to explain why this particular day is marked on the calendar. They just see it as a holiday, a cross between Christmas and Halloween. Basically, it's about chocolate, not just for them, but for me too. I've been eating chocolate, pretty much non-stop, since last Sunday morning.

The way I celebrated growing up was only mildly religious. It included a rare trip to church, specially baked breads, fish on Friday, and a quick prayer before digging in. I don't miss these traditions. I guess they never really spoke to me.

In our family we like to focus on the food. I go crazy buying Easter-themed chocolates, pan eggs, egg-shaped caramels, pastel-coloured jellybeans and the traditional foil-wrapped variety. And there has to be a chocolate bunny for each girl.

I prefer to buy good quality chocolate, perhaps it's because I subconsciously know that I'll be eating most of it later, one egg at a time. I avoid the waxy dollar-store variety of chocolate and automatically gravitate to the Swiss and German stuff, thereby spending much more than my budget allows. Part of my purchase always includes two small Easter toys, usually plush bunnies.

I'm not sure if this ever happens in your house, but on Easter Eve in our house, all of the bunnies from previous Easters magically migrate to the living room. We're not sure why, perhaps it's to greet the Big Rabbit himself.

Chocolate eggs are hidden all over the lower level of the house. The "big" treat is hidden in the girl's closets. This year it was a medium-sized chocolate bunny and a beautifully printed cardboard egg filled with more chocolates, fancy barrettes and a couple finger puppets.

The girls' excitement is contagious, even at 6:30 in the morning. After breakfast, they're given a healthy dose of chocolate and we spend the rest of the weekend visiting family and trying to burn it off. Then we eat more chocolate. In fact, we're going to have chocolate eggs kicking around the house for months to come. I'm eating chocolate as I write this.

Next year, I will start a new tradition: Buying less to begin with.

Comments

[Gina]

I liked reading about your family Easter tradition, especially how the bunnies migrate to the living room. That will become part of our tradition next year.

I do want to gently suggest that you not leave religion completly out of your holiday celebrations and your family's life. I was nonreligious for a time too, and I can tell you that I am happier now that I attend church regularly with my kids. When I think about what it would be like to celebrate Easter without church, it feels like all dessert and no "meal."

Since you're nonreligious at this point in your life, perhaps you are already adding depth to your Easter celebration in other ways. If not, you might want to try it. An example would be helping your kids take coloring books and crayons to sick kids stuck at the hospital. If you're nonreligious just because your religion has faded for lack of reinforcement, an inspring book to read is The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren.

Meanwhile, enjoy the chocolate, and I sincerely mean that, for it is good!

[mgood]

I like this post. It captures exactly the type of happy Easter family tradition we hope to enjoy - an indulgent day filled with anticipation, chocolate, adorable bunnies, chocolate, and chocolate.

I just had a discussion with a dear friend yesterday about secular celebrations on religious holidays. She was concerned about what sort of "Faith Life" we were teaching our daughter after I described our Easter - it was rather like yours. As a non-religious family, I wanted to be prepared when our daughter asks why we celebrate holidays the way we do, and I wanted to be able defend our choice to her and our extended, more religious family intelligently.

An article I read (after doing some research last year for our first Easter) tied everything together nicely. Others (I won’t bother with and found more opinionated) pointed out more pointedly the Catholic church’s habit (centuries ago) of taking ethnic, cultural, or pagan holidays and symbols and using them to make Christianity more palatable to those they were trying to convert, either as missionaries or even more recently when developing its dogma to keep attendance up. Having been raised Catholoic and choosing not to practice, this was also a good way to explain how they were entwined. I just found the concept of Oestre as a spring celebration to be beautiful, and the symbols of the bunny and eggs to be simply and appropriately explained.

I wanted to offer this article in case your girls ever do ask and as is typical for me, went about it the long way.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1111963808867

What a really fancy way to justify that I just want to eat chocoate and enjoy cute traditions. (If I were speaking out loud, it would be through a mouthful of chocolate, you know.)

*hauls over-chocolated self away from the computer because all this energy really should be used for vacuuming*

[Linda]

Can't comment right now my fingers are covered with chocolate!