Like most pagan children, as a kid I thought the whole point of Easter was to feed me many bright and wonderful forms of sugar. That an entire holiday was devoted to this splendid end seemed to me natural and right.
I had bad teeth and a right leg I could never stop from vibrating, but I wasn't entirely dense. Besides the ritual of ignoring Peeps and hording jelly beans, I knew Easter also had something to do with Christ on the cross, or Christ popping back out of the ground, or Christ floating up behind people and saying "Boo!", or something. I wasn't sure. I was sure that in one way or another Christ was heavily associated with guilt---a guilt which I myself felt acutely when cradling in my hands an unwrapped, still unchomped chocolate bunny.
I was also aware that Easter was a time to be even more grateful than usual that I wasn't a girl, since on Easter girls had to wear ribbons, dresses that looked like they'd actually slice up your legs, and shiny black shoes a vice couldn't bend.
Poor girls. Dolls. Hair they had to brush. Aversion to mud. The inhumanity!
Now I'm a Christian, and no longer associate Easter with jelly beans, chocolate, and frightfully indestructible Peeps.
I see that my neighbors are up early, hiding in the grass around their place brightly colored plastic eggs filled with what I can only imagine is Hershey's Kisses and jelly beans.
Once they go back inside I should probably run out there, just to make sure of what's in those eggs. I hate to see disappointed children.
My parents missed out on Easter. They didn't get it.
Happy Easter from their infinitely luckier son.
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