Yesterday we were grocery shopping and Eirena proclaimed "look mommy! there are balloons!". Actually they were very large eggs in purple and yellow. It was easy to see why she was confused. But then she wanted to know why there were large eggs on display in (dare I say garish?) colors.
All of this to say that I am glad that Eirena (and Adisu and Eskil) don't know about all the "associations" of Easter. Personally, I only remember decorating eggs once for Easter. And I didn't really get the point and I certainly didn't enjoy eating it the next day (because I don't like eggs). So can anyone explain to me the point of Easter eggs? Bunnies? Bunnies bringing eggs? Easter baskets? I don't understand any of this stuff. I feel like it must be some major cultural thing I skipped out on. But until I understand it all, we'll keep celebrating Easter as the celebration of Christ's resurrection.
5 comments:
I don't get it either and I HATE HATE HATE that my 2nd grader just came home with an Easter Bunny writing assignment. At least as he is learning about Greek myths he is taught that they are myths! I know that I sound like a scrooge but I hate all the Easter bunny / eggs especially since I can't think of a single story that all that is supposed to be tied to. Q: What is the message? A: that on Easter we look for cooked eggs and get candy. Hmmm ... maybe I need to take a chill pill. O.k. rant over.
It bugs me too! I don't understand the bunny thing. From my understanding, eggs symbolized rebirth (usually in the spring); and then early Christians sort of adopted the idea to symbolize Christ's resurrection. But I don't know where that bunny fits in! Or all the candy for that matter...
Check out these two links! This has actually come up several times for me this week!
http://kristinemcguire.com/?p=3304
http://www.krististephens.com/2010/03/a-fertility-goddess-bunnies-and-the-resurrection-of-christ.html
Hope those help!! They sure did for me!
Happy Resurrection Day!!
Glad to know I'm not the only one! Thanks for the links Heather, they were interesting.
I'll we'll keep our children as ignorant as possible for as long as possible :)
The Easter bunny seems fairly random to me, but we love decorating eggs. It's a fun science experiment too since we don't use any artificial food dyes, just fruits and vegetables. There's an Easter book illustrated by Tomie de Paola that makes the symbolic connection between eggs and the resurrection really beautiful. It's called Petook by Carryll Houselander. (Petook is the name of the rooster who fathers the eggs (-:).
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