The Bunny Came! The Bunny Came!

  Today is Easter Sunday.  I love Easter.  Maybe even more than Christmas.  For those who observe Easter, its significance can range anywhere from not worth celebrating to egg hunts for kids, a reason to get together with friends and family, or a significant religious holiday.

For me, Easter is a big deal.  I am one of the people who observe it as a significant religious holiday.  And because it’s a big deal to me, I like to celebrate it.  And just like Christmas when my husband and I do stockings for each other, we also do Easter baskets for each other.  Every Easter Sunday morning I get up, put his Easter basket together and set it out, then go wake him up with “The bunny came!  The bunny came!”  Silly?  Yes.  Of course.  But who says Easter can’t be a significant religious holiday and still come with some silliness? (For the record, I also think that Jesus and Santa are quite compatible at Christmas.)

In 2018 my husband and I went with a humanitarian group to Rwanda.  The group raises money to support projects that support survivors of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. We met genocide survivors while we were there.  They are amazing people, and all these years later, they still need our help.  Their stories are always hard to hear, and also incredibly important to listen to.

But I digress.  In May of 2018 we went to Rwanda.  One evening, a young man the group organizers knew joined us for dinner.  When they first met him he was a driver.  Since then, he had started a chicken farm, and was doing quite well.  He raised chickens and sold eggs.  Somehow through the course of the evening some of us started talking about Easter bunnies and Easter eggs.  I don’t remember now how it came up.  What I do remember was when he heard us talking from the other end of the table and asked us what Easter eggs were.  We tried to explain.  We really did.  Easter eggs – sometimes you colour them, sometimes they are made of chocolate.  And he looked at us like we had three heads.  Then it got worse.  We tried to explain Easter bunnies.  Bunnies – made of chocolate… I don’t know if we ever got to the relationship between the bunnies and the eggs because he just kept shaking his head at us.  And I realized how insane it must have sounded to someone who had never heard of them.  I think someone tried to google it to show him, but it was no use.  If the wi-fi was even working, showing him a picture of a chocolate bunny wasn’t going to help our cause.  We couldn’t figure out how to explain it so it made sense.  He thought we were crazy.  And I didn’t blame him a bit.

It made me wonder how many other things that we take for granted seem so incredibly foreign to other cultures.  And how many things from other cultures seem so foreign to us?  Heck, there are foods that my husband grew up with and love that I think sound terrible.  Have I tried them?  Some, but not all.  Some are just not for me and I’m not brave enough to try them. I have to admit that I may have made disparaging comments about some of them.

Then there was the year – long before we were married – that I discovered that his family colours eggs at Easter and – gasp! – EATS THEM!  Well, that is just wrong.  Just so very wrong.  I don’t know if I can even explain now why it was and is so wrong.  Now that we are married he still does it every year – I even join in on the colouring – and I (mostly) keep my thoughts about it to myself.  Yes, yes.  I know.  It would be a waste.  It would.  But somehow it just seems wrong.  And the fact that I hate eggs has nothing to do with it.  Honest.  (For the record, I was not alone in my horror.  Someone else who shall remain nameless in the interest of protecting the innocent also thought it was very, very wrong.)

How many other traditions do people have that we think are wrong – for valid or invalid reasons?  I’m sure there are many.  I know there are many people who will think “The bunny came!  The bunny came!” is silly.  That’s okay.  It is silly.  And we love it.

If you observe Easter, I wish you the very best Easter.  If you don’t, then I wish you the very best spring day.  And regardless of whether or not you observe Easter, I hope that today and in the week ahead you get to celebrate some of your very own traditions.  And maybe have some silliness along the way.

Happy Easter and Happy Spring!