Easter and all that goes with it

Warning - this is a rant. Don't get me wrong - I love holidays. I love Christmas, Valentine's Day, May Day, Easter, Mother's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veteran's Day, and Thanksgiving - and all those others that I failed to mention. I love celebrating. I love that families get together. I love the extra special good food.

What I don't love is all the trappings associated with them. Here we have Easter. It's supposed to be about Christ, his death and resurrection. Instead, it's about eggs, chocolate bunnies, and jelly beans. Our Primary sponsored an Easter egg hunt this afternoon. They divided the kids up into junior and senior Primary - an obvious division, only with junior Primary (which included the nursery kids), you have very little ones (ages 1.5, 2, 3 &4) all the way up to age 8. So we had three older kids with full Easter baskets and the nursery kids and Sunbeams had one or two treats - not eggs, just random candy they found on the ground. Granted, I'm not about to truck home loads of goodies. But when we teachers tried to encourage sharing and letting the little ones find some eggs, we were met with, well, nothing. They just ignored us. They ran ahead and collected as many as they could. It was a race. They obviously won.

Now I was lucky - and smart. I planned an egg hunt with my parents at their house. I dropped the eggs off last night and they hid them for the kids. Laurel and Will got to find their own and have the place to themselves. Still, I think some lessons in Christ-like sharing were much needed at the church today. I was just a little bit disgusted with all the greediness I saw. And no parents around to curb the behaviour. I guess I'll have to remembe this and be there to make sure it's not my kids doing it a few years down the road.

I know they are just kids, but that's the point. We're supposed to be teaching them what is right and how to be kind and loving, not selfish and disrespectful to grown-ups.

So, I'm boycotting Easter next year. We'll still do a family activity, but I'd like to focus more on what it's really about. Holidays have gotten way out of hand - don't get me started on Memorial Day, Veteran's Day and Christmas!

But here are cute photos of my little ones hunting their eggs and playing around.