Easter bunny

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Do you do it?

When our kids were little, my wife would hide eggs outside (including decorated hard-boiled eggs + chocolate eggs) and the kids would look for them. Then, once they found all the eggs they'd say, "Again". This would continue until everyone had a chance to hide the eggs.

I was not raised Christian. As such, I am not certain what the "role" of the Easter Bunny in celebrating Easter or playing hide-and-seek with eggs.

I hate the Easter Bunny pretense--it seems so ridiculously absurd--but my husband and son enjoy it, so I play along. At least this year there are actual rabbits in our yard, so we tease my son that it's the Easter Bunny trying to figure out where to hide the eggs. Secretly, though, I can't wait till he decides he's to old for the Easter Bunny and Santa and we can just enjoy a holiday for the opportunity to relax, without expectations which center around some fictitious entity behaving in a highly suspicious manner...

Rocket, both Santa and the Easter bunny are secular, not Christian. If you don't do it for your kids you had to tell them not to spoil it for other kids.

This is what really surprised me.... If a family has a wide age range of kids, sometimes the parents work very hard to keep the children "believing" in Santa so as not to spoil it for the young ones. I taught a 6th grade class and assumed all the kids knew their parents played Santa. One mom was upset with me. Wow.

We didn't do the Easter bunny b/c that was not part of my up bringing . I couldn't pull off Santa very well either, but my husband did a few things. He had the kids leave cookies and carrots for Santa and reindeer, and left a key outside so Santa could get in. My parents hid Easter baskets, not eggs or candy. They didn't want ants to find candy not found. I used to hide baskets, but my kids can't eat candy, so I stopped pretty early. I don't do the tooth fairy very well either. The kids love me anyway.

The funnest thing was when I was a young single person. I lived with a family. Late on Christmas Eve, the father took some big black boots and some think insulating material and was looking for something he could use for red pants. I lent him my red pants and he stuffed insulation in them and stuffed them into the boots. Then he placed them in the fireplace, as if Santa got stuck and had to leave his pants and boots behind. The absolute funnest time I had was to watch the children discover that Santa had left his pants behind. These kids were "too old" to really believe in Santa, but they were transformed for the morning, and really enjoyed.

Last edited by aann on 20 Apr 2014, 12:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't think the easter bunny has anything to do with Christianity.

The holiday is an ancient seasonal festival of fertility. The myth of Christ is a variant of widespread "year king" myth in which the king of the year is sacrificed and his blood (and possibly other parts) are plowed into the soil and then are resurrected with the year in the fecundity of spring. The eggs and rabbits are both obvious symbols of fertility and chocolate is an aphrodisiac, so it makes sense that it was brought in.

Daffodils are out. Birds are singing. There is no big myth here to lie about or teach. It's a day to celebrate spring and the resurgence of life all around. Maybe it only really makes sense as a northern hemisphere holiday--it should probably celebrated in the autumn in the southern hemisphere.

Anyway, we have done the egg hunt most years and have a little feast with a ham or something. My wife usually says she doesn't want to do anything big, but then she invites people over. I don't really understand that, but I kind of like it.

Easter is actually more astrological than religious. It has to do with spring. Rebirth, and regrowth. Christians turned it into an easter bunny fairy tail. Christmas is no different. It has to do with astrology. I usually get to see about 100 family members today. A big sespool of procreation. YAY!! !! !! some of them are feuding, so hopefully I will only need to put up with 50 of them. It is for the kids mostly. I will try not to go out of the way, and talk to anyone.

my family when I was a kid and any Jewish people I knew and know don't do easter bunny for their kids.. My DH is Catholic, so my kids do get to celebrate both Jewish and Catholic holidays. My kids do know about Santa and the Easter Bunny, I don't know any Jewish people who do the Easter bunny.

My kids love it, when they ask me about it I tell them to ask their dad cause I have no idea...lol

We have a lot of difficulties with anything relating to culture with our son. We celebrate a variety of traditions, hoping to use at as a means for global cultural studies, and you know, helping him understanding what people do in groups, culturally. My husband and I have different cultural/religious backgrounds. We tend to do all of it, albeit in a scaled-down way.

We also follow different cultural traditions that appeal to various special interests of his. My son is heavy into the Japanese language, as well as math and science; so we have incorporated a number of different holidays, too. We do Japanese Children's Day. We do the Chinese Moon festival (as an excuse to do lunar things), and we celebrate Pi and Tau day b/c well, math!

So TL:DR, yes we do the Easter Bunny. I don't have any issues with it. My son mostly likes to count the eggs as he finds them. He doesn't care much what is in them. He believes the Easter Bunny is real. I am OK with that, as I think it is good for imaginative thinking as opposed to worrying about perpetrating a scam.

He may hate me later, but I am hoping the fact that we are trying to make his life fun will count for something.

I got my first pet, Oscar, after an Easter egg hunt. I was six. He was a parakeet.

It forever cemented my faith in the Easter Bunny.

Oscar lived six more years after I got him.

No because neither my husband nor I did it when we were children. He's Jewish so it doesn't really go with his culture, and I'm from Europe and although we did paint Easter eggs, I had never heard of the Easter Bunny until I moved to Canada as an adult. I don't think my kids would really understand it anyway. I tried to do the tooth fairy a few times with both of my kids, and it went right over both of their heads each time. I think it's a neat idea though.

Oh yeah - I realize that Santa and the Easter Bunny are secular traditions. What I didn't realize (until this year) is that the Easter Bunny was responsible for hiding eggs at the Easter egg hunt.

So, I was talking to my brother and nephew earlier this week and mentioned that, during prior Easter's, my wife would organize an Easter Egg hunt with my daughters (even though we were not Christian). I mentioned that my wife would hide the eggs and my daughters would look for them. Apparently, my nephew was told that the Easter Bunny hid the eggs. But, this year, he was beginning to have doubts that the Easter Bunny actually existed. So, apparently, my saying this confirmed his suspicions. I felt really bad. I suppose this also means that myths about Santa and the Tooth Fairy will be dispelled next.

Note: Edited to make it more readable.

Last edited by Rocket123 on 20 Apr 2014, 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I still believe in Santa

Just the bunny and the baskets. My 6 year old figured it out though. Otherwise were atheists so we don't do the Jesus part.

We do the basket and bunny, but we don't hide the basket. My parents used to hide my basket when I was a kid, and one year I couldn't find it and actually gave up. I just sat there and cried until they went and got it out of the clothes dryer.
That's probably why I don't hide baskets.

I am Santa. . I Make stuff. A list. Check it twice. naughty or nice. Weeeeeeeeeee!! ! The flying raindeer, red outfit, beard, and jumping down a chimney... not going to happen.

Oh, I love how you worded this!

Edit to add: My son is my parent's only grandchild so far. They are into all the Holidays so I haven't decided what I'm going to do as he gets older. They tried to hide plastic eggs outside and he wanted nothing to do with it. :-/ I think finding eggs are fun, but I 'might' play along too or explain to my son that Grandma & Grandpa do it. Not sure yet.