Easter Bunny Blues

We did not have easter baskets, grass, peeps, chocolate, or Cadbury eggs this year. I, with the reluctant, but understanding agreement of my children, have declared this home a candy free zone, ad infinitum (with some exceptions, of course.)

This is a radical shift in this "holiday observance" for my family - I have received, and given easter baskets, candy, toys, and other such paraphenalia since as early as I can remember - say, 1968 or 1969.

As a child, Easter would comsist of getting up early, finding baskets, eating a light breakfast (candy & toast, most often), and going to church. As a child my church attendance was steady - we were Lutheran, then Nazarine, then Methodist, then Church of the United Brethren (pretty much Methodist), at 12 I became a Mormon- and, except for the order and duration fo church meetings, the introduction of a simple sacrament ritual, and a less-than-wholly-tolerant concerning non-members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, the Easter ritual went on pretty much unchanged.

I grew up, I moved out, I didn't go to any church unless there was a wedding (I will not attend funeral services, IMO they're kind of silly.) The Easter Bunny was honored - the grass was replaced with marijuana (I used to line a basket with pot & add jelly beans), and there was usually a cookout with some irrational and dangerous chocolate / liquor sodden dessert. Times were good, wierd, but good.

Then I found out I was getting married, and awaiting the arrival of a child. Things changed.

In March of 1990 my daughter was born, and, if you think that by Easter the ritual was in full swing - me with the real bunny-grass and jellybeans, my wife with the lovely new dress, hat, and lily - the baby (Nina, you reading this?) with an infant dress that cost me $75 I didn't have - I picked it out, it was the most precious thing I ever saw, with an applique' rose in the center of the lace frills across the chest - with matching hat. We were the poor, and didn't care - the stuffed bunny sat in the crib, we went to church, baked down, and got ready to go see the in-laws for dinner.

Like clockwork, every two years, we had another child. The Easter Bunny got our business, delighted our kids with the badly animated and vioced cartoons, and meant that vast amounts and assortments of candy was to be had by all.

Do I sound bitter, used? If I don't, then I wrote this badly, or you're not paying attention.

The TV, the radio, the newspapers, the schools (and even church!) foretold kowtowed to the mystical arrival of the rabbit from Hell. Every year, a month or so before Easter Sunday, the stores would be filled to overflowing with everything I needed to observe the true modern meaning of every major holiday the west observes - the cunning little candy dispensing machines, Oreos, toilet paper? yeah - even that was festooned with that caricatured rodent that looked like he had kept his head full of ether since before the Son rose.

Year after year, acquiescing to the hype, the profit margin of corporate candy cartels, pumping the poison into the mouths and guts and cardiovascular future-sumps of my children, the memetics of plastic complacency, even as the Sugar Blues (1986) told of the dangers of the white death - I wouldn't read the book because people talked, and I didn't have to trust the gossip. I wish I had read it then. If you think I'm over the top here, check it out and get back to me.

But, the E-B brought ME the THC, and the Jelly Bellys (Thank You Mr. Reagan!) - so, hey, I would light my pipe, shut my mouth, take a hit, and play along. The kids thoguht Peter was cool as hell, and they knew that I knew him. Yeah... Right on...

This year, like I said up front, was different. No more. One of my kids is ADHD, and the rest would eat it straight from the coffee-sugar jar in the morning if I didn't get up to supervise the school prep. I don't smoke pot, watch TV, or succumb to the mediated market hype anymore - My kids and I have spent more time in therapy in the last two years than 95% of the population spends in their entire lives. I need wellness for them, and for me, and I am no longer going to sit idly by while it's coerced out of them by legal drug dealers. I think free, create my opinions out of the air - I don't even know where the box is, anymore, much less do I know whether I'm in it, out of it, or under it.

And the Easter Bunny Blues kick in tomorrow, when the kids I love enough to yank free from the giant moneysucking poison-pumping machine go back to school and get the full-on stare of the indoctrinated. No church ("Luckeeee, we had to go, but you're not Christian, right? Your dad's a Booodist, and your mom goes to college."), no bunny memorabillia ("Check out the SkateBunny I got with the chocolate RocketEggs!"), no candy (:crickets: :stare:) - and the beat goes on...

I am holding back the guilt I feel because I didn't run down to Wal-Mart and get with the program, I am withstanding the desire to keep my kids home tomorrow (I am not nuts, they had a 4 day weekend!), and I am not going to apologize.

I'm sayin', after all this, that the Easter Bunny is an interloper into our culture, a poisonous Pie-eyed Piper - Jesus deserves credit for standing for love and charity throughout western history - the Easter Bunny (and the marketing executives at those candy companies) deserve cells at Guantanamo for spreading poisonous chemicals and dyes and greed and gluttony into the minds and through the veins of our children - the only future we have.

Fuck You Easter Bunny!

Can I get a witness? I sure could use one right now.
-b