Easter

Well, its Tuesday, and I am finally getting over my “Easter hangover” which I have had the past couple of days.

Is it just me, or is Easter becoming Christmas Part Two? Yet another chance for us Moms to run ourselves rampant, attending countless Easter parties and egg hunts. Another chance for us to run up the credit cards we just paid off from Christmas. As the years pass I’m finding myself running around just as much and getting exhausted just as fast as I do when I am preparing for Christmas.

When I was a kid, Easter meant a pretty dress, Sunday Mass, and Cadbury Easter Eggs. Now, its exactly like Christmas, only warmer and without the annoyingly addictive Christmas carols filling the radio.

Now I am just as much to blame for commercializing Easter as the next. I spent my Good Friday in line at Toys R’ Us. My cart was overflowing with toys, a new bike for H, roller skates for J, a Winnie the Pooh rider for L. A few hundred dollars later I left Toys R’ Us. So much for a basket of Peeps and Malted Eggs huh?

Easter is also “my” holiday, meaning I host it every year. My sister-in-law hosts Thanksgiving, my Mom hosts Christmas and Fourth of July, and I get Easter. So each year my house is full of family. We do egg hunts, eat Lamb Cake, and shovel in enough brown sugar ham to feed a small town. For weeks I start the preparations to make our annual Easter Party a hit. This of course means I'm running around everywhere, trying to find the perfect dress for Miss J, heading to another egg hunt, trying to master hard boiled eggs for coloring eggs.

So Friday night and Saturday I spent my time cleaning carpets, stuffing eggs, making pasta salads and of course packing baskets for J and H and L. I started to feel that Christmas exhaustion taking over. I tried to shake out of it…I think I can, I think I can!

By Saturday night, as I drafted rhyming clues to the Easter Bunny’s game of hiding the kids presents, I found myself getting burned out of one of my favorite holidays. I realized that I hadn’t even thought about the true meaning behind the holiday. I was becoming a charter member of the "let's commercialize yet another christian holiday" club!

So Easter morning, after we had our hunt and the kids saw their prizes, I decided I wanted to take my daughter to church. I wasn’t ready to take the risk of bringing H to a crowded Easter service yet, so I decided just J and I would go. We got all dolled up and headed off to church.

Just walking into a church Easter morning made me feel better, somehow renewed about the holiday. It was a safe haven where I didn’t have to see dozens of chocolate bunnies staring at me with gum drops eyes or eye one more Peep (that I secretly want to smash through the wrapping). I sat there with my daughter and was just happy to experience the true meaning of Easter.

After the brief hour of Easter renewal, I was ready for the party. I had an amazing time with my family, had a blast watching the kids hunt for the golden egg, and laughed as the kids fought over who was going to eat the head of the Lamb Cake!  My love of Easter was definitely back full swing.

That night after everyone left I instantly took my Easter decorations down. I have now put all the eggs, baskets, and rabbits safe in their Rubbermaid bin home to hibernate for a year. The exhaustion of planning and running around will fade, I’ll eventually vacuum up all that damn Easter grass from my carpets, but I’m going to try and hold on to that feeling I felt sitting there in church with my daughter. Those are the Easter memories I hope we both keep.

Mandi