Unlike Christmas, I’ve yet to really formally lay claim to our family traditions for Easter. So far, they’ve changed every year. Some years we travel to my parents’ house — about 6 hours away by car. We still dye eggs and hunt for candy, but my parents are not religious so there is no church.
Some years we stay home, and do a neighbourhood egg hunt, plus a hunt for chocolate on Easter morning at home, PLUS a hunt for chocolate at church on Easter morning.
I haven’t even quite managed to figure out who brings the eggs and candy and Easter basket filled with chocolate and books, new swim goggles, a fairy wand, and a plush bunny. I think the Easter Bunny brings the chocolate eggs around the house, and a hollow chocolate bunny, just as he did for me when I was a child. But I give the basket with the books and other little trinkets. No big toys — this is not going to be a second Christmas.
The girls, at 3 and 6, have not asked very detailed questions about the bunny, though we’ve read a few books. Sometimes the bunny is portrayed as the One and Only Easter Bunny. Other times there are families of bunnies, and bunnies in training, and the Easter Bunny seems a more flexible legend than Santa ever was.
Figuring out traditions is hard in a world where we are besieged with Facebook photos and Pinterest-worthy celebrations in other families. Piles of presents, weeks of Easter egg hunts, photo shoots with bunnies and all kinds of food and family permutations. Christmas I know. Christmas is Jesus in the manger and Santa in the chimney. Easter? Easter is Jesus’ empty tomb and chocolate eggs.
I was not raised with religion, so it has come slowly to our family, and involved me attending a liberal church and waiting to see what the girls take from it all.
And now I’ve seen a glimpse. Claire’s student teacher sought me out this week to tell me how cute she was … and how religious. Somehow, the kids had been talking about Jesus. Claire was asked who Jesus was, and she replied “The son of God.” The teacher thought this was adorable. I was considerably less sure. Eeek. My twice-a-month churchgoing child was making a name for herself as one of the few kids in her secular school to talk Christianity the way the others talked about Anna and Elsa and whether Hans or Kristof was cuter.
My liberal church is very flexible about even who Jesus was — a great teacher probably. A historic figure, surely. A literal son of God? Possibly. We won’t insist. Are you coming to the spaghetti dinner on Maundy Thursday? Yes, yes, we’ll be there. No foot washing, please, we’re not quite that demonstrative.
We do have one favourite Easter tradition already, though – Palm Sunday – the bicycle parade at church. Scooters are fine too. Decorated if possible. The children of the congregation ride around the sanctuary as Hosannahs are sung, and the adults wave palm branches (or this year, pussy willows). It is lovely. This year, we hadn’t been to church in a few weeks, and so had seen no announcement about Palm Sunday. But surely, I thought, the bike parade would happen. We moved to the neighbourhood and the church four years ago, we’ve done it every year.
Still, I cautioned my children as we rushed Sunday morning to get the bikes from the shed. We decorated them hurriedly with felt flowers. I think there’s a bike parade, but I can’t be sure. We’ll go and see. If not, we’ll leave the bikes outside. Six years into parenting and I’m smart enough to manage expectations.
We arrived at church, me winded and out of breath. My children can now ride their bikes faster than I can walk, and so running had been involved in the journey. We pushed the bikes up to the door, and I peeked inside.
“Is it the parade?” Claire asked, stealing herself for disappointment.
“It is,” I said. And in we went, bikes and all.
Our first solid Easter tradition, the Palm Sunday bike parade around the sanctuary. I’m not sure what else we’ll settle on, but this one is a good one.