Childhood Easters

A very short piece on childhood Easters for this Easter Sunday morning

When I was very young I found the concept of Easter very difficult to understand.  This was because to me it seemed that not very long ago we were celebrating the birth of Jesus through Christmas yet here we were three or four months later marking his death after what I thought was a very short life and how did he become an adult so quickly?  A few sessions at Sunday school sorted out that early confusion for me.

Easters have always been good.

I personally think that it is one of the best bank holidays of the year.  The weather is usually good and better than at Christmas.  There are four days of continuous break, except if you work in retail or the military or the emergency services.  Four days which always seem less frenetic than the hustle and consumerism of Christmas.

Early Easter Sundays, back in the days when I thought Jesus only lived for three months, always started with an Easter Egg hunt around the home.  We couldn’t do one outside because where we lived there would invariably be snow on the ground.  I was the youngest of three and so my parents would lay an Easter Egg trail throughout the home.  They left clutches of eggs in multiples of three.  My brothers were really fair to me.  If they found a clutch before I did they always made sure my share was still there for me to collect.  To collect the eggs our parents would give small baskets and one year I remember they gave us all waste paper baskets for our rooms decorated with an Easter theme.

The hunt would always finish in the dining room where the breakfast table would be laid and at each of our places would be a huge boxed chocolate Easter Egg.  Breakfast then off to church where I would sit thinking about Easter Eggs and try to resolve how someone could only live for three months yet do so much.

Happy Easters.