Community Corner

Peeps, Easter Bunnies and Why We Celebrate Easter

Happy Easter to all!

Peeps. Those fluffy, yummy, sugary, little-marshmallow-shaped chickadees (and bunnies) always seem to come out of their hiding place and onto store shelves to fill our lives with Easter fun.

I think I look more forward to the Peeps than the chocolate Easter Bunny. The Easter Bunny has long spent his time in the spotlight of Easter candies. I like Easter Bunny, but I like Peeps better.

I wonder what Jesus would have said about Peeps? Would he have preferred Peeps or the hollow-chocolate Easter Bunny? My guess is he would have loved them both equally. Peeps and the choco bunnies make kids happy. Jesus loved children, so whatever makes them happy would have probably received his blessing.

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Easter was always a time in my family when we would beg our parents for an Easter basket. Sometimes we would get one, sometimes not. My mother was essentially a single parent and sometimes we didn’t have the money for it. One thing we always received – money or not – was mass.

Easter mass was different than regular mass. People dressed nicer, faces that had not been to a mass in ages showed, and even the priest’s sermon (I was raised Catholic) was filled with much more excitement.

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As a child, church was boring to me. I didn’t really understand why we had to kneel, stand, kneel again, stand again, sing a song that I didn’t know the words to, and wait until everyone had received communion. But Easter was different. There was an incentive to behave when an Easter basket was in play.

I knew that if I behaved, I would get to pick out sweets from the Easter basket that we usually shared between my sister and I.

Now that I am a parent, my girls look forward to dyeing eggs and hunting for them later on, but they also look forward to going to church. To them, church is not something that’s boring and although they know they are getting Easter treats, they don’t use it as motivation to behave in church. I admire them for that.

At the age of 4, my now 6-year-old daughter would tell anyone who would listen that Easter was the time when Jesus would return to Earth. Of course, now she knows better and when asked why we celebrate Easter (as I am writing this column) she replied, “God died on the cross for us,” in between bites of her split pea soup.

That’s my girl!

Wishing you many Peeps, chocolate Easter bunnies and of course, Jesus in your life. Happy Easter!


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