The many faces of Easter. For children it’s about chocolate and the Easter bunny. The eggs have to go out tonight, even though the children are no longer children, it’s a tradition.

Of course, when I was a child, there wasn’t such a level of excess surrounding Easter. I do not remember seeing foil wrapped bunnies and eggs in the shops in February. And there was generally only one egg. A large one that we would crack open at the end of Easter Sunday lunch. I have to admit that the chocolate wasn’t what I looked forward to the most. For me it was the surprise inside the egg. They used to do that, in Italy. Not sure if they still do. Every egg used to come with something special inside. It would most probably have been something cheap and plastic. I presume this was the case, as there is not one Easter egg surprise that has lingered in my memory. It didn’t matter what piece of junk was inside the egg. It was the expectation… or rather, the egg-spectation (hehehehehe) that was most delicious. I cherish those memories to this day.

Easter was a venerated religious occasion, and as a child, I never really questioned why that was so. There was that mysterious thing about Jesus being in the sky bathed in that golden glow. Though being Catholic was compulsory, and though my mother was devout, nobody ever really went into the mechanics of what actually happened at Easter time. Or if they did, I probably tuned out. In the early 70s, we went to see this strange film, Jesus Christ Superstar. As it turns out, it’s all about Easter. It was through this film, which has since become one of my all-time-favourite musicals, that the truly gruesome nature of Good Friday was revealed.

Does anyone know why they call it Good Friday? I mean, I think it’s patently clear that it was a drastically horrendous Friday, so who decided on that misnomer?

I remember my mother telling me when I was little that Easter was the most important religious holiday. I puzzled at this. Christmas always seemed much grander in scale and in jollity. Firstly, it was a rather spectacular story about the birth of this remarkable person who snuck into the world in a seemingly surreptitious way. Despite the low-key entry into the world, there was the appearance of a comet, there were kings from the East (or wherever) dressed in fancy clothes, and bringing expensive, rare gifts, and a colourful pageant of shepherds, farmers, sheep, camels, chickens and kids with drums. I tell you, it was some party. So how my mother could even think that Easter was better than Christmas totally stumped me. Except for the resurrection bit, the rest was not a nice story, topped off in dastardly fashion with the famous betrayal by kiss, and Jesus telling his father he wanted to renege on the deal they’d made all that time ago when they were still sitting side by side up there in the clouds. That last supper in the garden of Gethsemane actually turned out to be one really big fizzer, didn’t it?

Last Thursday as I drove to work, I saw primary school aged kids walking to school, some with their mothers, all decked out in their Easter hats. I said a prayer of thanks for no longer having any children in primary school. How I hated that hat parade. Not so much the parade, it was the lead up that was a problem. The trips to the two dollar shop for crepe paper, cardboard, little fuzzy yellow chicks, glitter and whatever else was going to turn my crowded house into a craft disaster area. All the work involved in making a hat for your child that won’t disgrace them in front of their friends, now that’s a lot of pressure for any busy parent. I gave some assistance in the junior grades, but once my kids were in grade 2, I stepped back and let them construct their own Easter bonnets. Let’s just say none of them ended up looking like Judy Garland in Easter Parade.

So as I set off to bed now, leaving a trail of eggs for tomorrow’s traditional hunt behind me, I have one last question: How does the bunny fit in? Bunnies and eggs do not go together! Supermarket iconography does include chickens at Easter time. I get the connection with eggs; new life, renewal and all that. However I still don’t get why we have to have a bunny – and a giant bunny at that!

And a last, last question: Why all the chocolate? But I guess that is a redundant question, for there is always a justification for chocolate.