An Easter Miracle

On Easter, he emerged from his underground resting place and performed miracles. I have always thought the Easter Bunny was a curious tradition.

When I was a kid, the Easter Bunny brought me a cowboy hat and toy guns. He also hid all the eggs we had decorated a week before and left out on the counter -- which we found and ate. My brother and I survived. We saw no irony in a symbol of peace and new life arming us and then trying to poison us.

When my oldest son was two, the Easter Bunny came to visit his daycare. We sent our camera along. Someone at the center knew how to take photos. She took two photos. The first was our son screaming, while being held by the scariest, six-foot Easter Bunny I ever saw. The next photo showed all of his friends with matching looks of horror. They appeared to be watching our son about to be consumed by the scariest, six-foot Easter Bunny they ever saw.

A few years later, his little brother turned two. We went to a big Easter egg hunt. This was one of those city wide hunts. They had the eggs just laying all over, like a giant flock of rubber chickens had just escaped the field narrowly with their lives. Colorful plastic eggs littered the park, with no attempt to conceal them.

Parents held their kids like attack dogs until the whistle blew to release them. The scene that followed re-enacted a miniature version of the LA riots of the 90s. Some parents watched in horror as their precious angels turned into rabid looters. Others cheered their own kids on like proud rooster trainers in a grand cock fight. Still others just stood dumbfounded, watching their own kids get trampled, just as they had been trampled so many years before.

After the kids finished hoarding all the eggs, they were treated to a special surprise. Out of a panel van stepped a giant white rabbit. We grabbed our youngest for a photo op, like all good parents. He screamed and screamed as we handed him over to this total stranger -- a stranger wearing a mask in public; who had just stepped out of a van that would have been the envy of pedophiles everywhere. I think he developed a healthy respect for the Easter Bunny that day.

After that, we found a new way to keep our kids in line. "You better be good. The Easter Bunny is watching."