Rabbit Day memories
Easter was a great holiday growing up, but I had no idea what the point was to be honest.
That was one of holidays that actually had us go to church when I was a kid, until my mom and dad started going on their own when I was about 9 years old, my parents only went to church on Easter, Christmas Eve, and if one of us had something special going on in Sunday School and they had to see it.
Why those days and no other I couldn't quite figure out. My parents didn't really like going back then, but I guess they figured they should go for Jesus's birthday and the day he rose from the dead at the very least. My dad wanted to sleep in a bit on Sunday (he worked all the other days, 11 hours a day) and my mother mainly went to church on those holidays because she didn't want to make God mad (she calls it her Ex-Catholic guilt.)
I remember not understanding Easter at all, because to me it was just a day to get candy (like Halloween which also doesn't make sense) find eggs that a rabbit hid in your house, eat ham at some relatives house, and go to "big person" church one of the three or four times a year.
I didn't make the connection that Easter was the day that Jesus rose from the dead for a while, so as a kid I thought it was all about the rabbits. I mean if it was about Jesus, why didn't they put his name on the holiday like Christmas?
Easter didn't make sense, but God didn't make a lot of sense back then either. I asked my parents what "Good Friday" was, and they said it was when Jesus was put on the cross. I didn't understand atonements or how that would be good in any way back then, so I asked "Why didn't they call it 'Crappy Friday' since I didn't see what was so damn good about nailing a nice guy like Jesus onto a cross for doing nothing wrong?" Ok so I was 7 years old back then and not very tactful, I remember asking that because my dad didn't know if he should laugh or yell at me for that comment. I don't think he understood it either. He told me to ask my mother.
So for me Easter was Rabbit Day. I had to go to bed early, like Christmas because Omnipresent rabbits can tell if you are not sleeping yet for some reason like that Santa guy. When I woke up some rabbit broke into my house somehow and took all the eggs that I dyed a couple days before out of the fridge and hid them around my house. He also left me a lot of candy in a little basket.
Cadbury cream eggs are my favorite, and you can only get them around Easter time, which makes it a special treat. I remember thinking that the Easter Bunny actually owned Cadbury's candy company growing up. It was proof that the Easter Bunny was real to me, since who would have a factory that made candy only one month out of the year. I figured the Easter Bunny had a little workshop on the South Pole and he had his own elves or something. I have since figured out Cadbury is from England, which means I can just ask Rob a billion questions about it sometime when we are trying to read C.S. Lewis at small group. (Asking questions inappropriately is still a bad habit of mine.) I did find this neat English store researching Cadbury so maybe I can order Rob a birthday gift from here.
I got other candy of course like Peanut butter cups, M and M's, and those peanut butter egg things. For some reason the Easter Bunny knew that I was the only kid in my family that didn't like jellybeans and malted eggs, so Ed and Caroline got those and I got more M and M's (Thanks Mom, you always remembered stuff like that.) We also would get basket stuffers like blowing bubbles, silly string, yo-yos and the like, and the big thing was we would get a kite and a mega-spool of kite string.
The kite was my favorite, I would race across the street to the (currently empty of corn in April) cornfield to fly my kite with my brother and sister. The cornfield was perfect because it had a lot of wind, and no trees and power lines. We loved our kites, but my family was really bad at flying them, in truth they spent a lot of time nosediving into the ground. The average life span of a kite was about 2 weeks and by the time it was done it was covered with duct or electical tape to try to hold together. That works out though because we got another one the next year...
Happy Easter or belated Easter everyone
That was one of holidays that actually had us go to church when I was a kid, until my mom and dad started going on their own when I was about 9 years old, my parents only went to church on Easter, Christmas Eve, and if one of us had something special going on in Sunday School and they had to see it.
Why those days and no other I couldn't quite figure out. My parents didn't really like going back then, but I guess they figured they should go for Jesus's birthday and the day he rose from the dead at the very least. My dad wanted to sleep in a bit on Sunday (he worked all the other days, 11 hours a day) and my mother mainly went to church on those holidays because she didn't want to make God mad (she calls it her Ex-Catholic guilt.)
I remember not understanding Easter at all, because to me it was just a day to get candy (like Halloween which also doesn't make sense) find eggs that a rabbit hid in your house, eat ham at some relatives house, and go to "big person" church one of the three or four times a year.
I didn't make the connection that Easter was the day that Jesus rose from the dead for a while, so as a kid I thought it was all about the rabbits. I mean if it was about Jesus, why didn't they put his name on the holiday like Christmas?
Easter didn't make sense, but God didn't make a lot of sense back then either. I asked my parents what "Good Friday" was, and they said it was when Jesus was put on the cross. I didn't understand atonements or how that would be good in any way back then, so I asked "Why didn't they call it 'Crappy Friday' since I didn't see what was so damn good about nailing a nice guy like Jesus onto a cross for doing nothing wrong?" Ok so I was 7 years old back then and not very tactful, I remember asking that because my dad didn't know if he should laugh or yell at me for that comment. I don't think he understood it either. He told me to ask my mother.
So for me Easter was Rabbit Day. I had to go to bed early, like Christmas because Omnipresent rabbits can tell if you are not sleeping yet for some reason like that Santa guy. When I woke up some rabbit broke into my house somehow and took all the eggs that I dyed a couple days before out of the fridge and hid them around my house. He also left me a lot of candy in a little basket.
Cadbury cream eggs are my favorite, and you can only get them around Easter time, which makes it a special treat. I remember thinking that the Easter Bunny actually owned Cadbury's candy company growing up. It was proof that the Easter Bunny was real to me, since who would have a factory that made candy only one month out of the year. I figured the Easter Bunny had a little workshop on the South Pole and he had his own elves or something. I have since figured out Cadbury is from England, which means I can just ask Rob a billion questions about it sometime when we are trying to read C.S. Lewis at small group. (Asking questions inappropriately is still a bad habit of mine.) I did find this neat English store researching Cadbury so maybe I can order Rob a birthday gift from here.
I got other candy of course like Peanut butter cups, M and M's, and those peanut butter egg things. For some reason the Easter Bunny knew that I was the only kid in my family that didn't like jellybeans and malted eggs, so Ed and Caroline got those and I got more M and M's (Thanks Mom, you always remembered stuff like that.) We also would get basket stuffers like blowing bubbles, silly string, yo-yos and the like, and the big thing was we would get a kite and a mega-spool of kite string.
The kite was my favorite, I would race across the street to the (currently empty of corn in April) cornfield to fly my kite with my brother and sister. The cornfield was perfect because it had a lot of wind, and no trees and power lines. We loved our kites, but my family was really bad at flying them, in truth they spent a lot of time nosediving into the ground. The average life span of a kite was about 2 weeks and by the time it was done it was covered with duct or electical tape to try to hold together. That works out though because we got another one the next year...
Happy Easter or belated Easter everyone
Labels: faith, family, holidays, rants, social tripe
posted by Janus Torrell at 9:57 AM
3 Comments:
Janus - Remind me to tell my story about my brother threatening to kidnap the easter bunny someday; it's good. ;)
The trick to flying a kite was having the proper tail on it. Plenty of wind helps too.
Peace,
- Neo
Ok you have to post it or email it now Neo.
Well the kites we had were Walmart specials, so we kind of expected them to suck pretty bad.
Good seeing you.
Janus - You could just cut off a piece of thin ribbon and tape it or staple it onto the back of the kite. That's what I used to do. :)
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