Though I am, first and foremost, a Halloween soul, I've realized over the past couple of years that I have a lot of memories attached to a different holiday...and that is Easter.
(This was a favorite die cut of both myself and my mother. I believe she had one before I was born, then later we got a reproduction.)
I grew up a lover of all holidays, even the small ones, but Easter is one that sticks out to me when I look back on my childhood. Christmas is more of a general feeling, but Easter, I can pinpoint several memories that really stick out.
For starters, if you know me from any of my main social media, you know that I celebrate Halloween all year round and have dedicated my entire being to keeping the spirit alive, no matter the calendar date. But when I look back on it, my first instance of trying to preserve a holiday, was actually not Halloween at all, but, you guessed it...Easter.
My mother had a collection of window clings for every holiday when I was very small, and Easter was no different. I don't remember exactly how old I was, somewhere between four and six, I'd guess, but there was one year that I just absolutely could not bear the idea of not seeing those clings again for another year, and begged to have them hung in my own window indefinitely. My mother reluctantly agreed, and there the clings stayed until they eventually dried out and became unusable.
(These are pictures I found in an eBay listing last year, but they are the exact ones we had, though I remember having some chicks as well.)
I'm not sure what it was about Easter, but it always just felt special somehow. Maybe I just liked the cute aesthetic of it, as I was very girly as a child. Or perhaps it had to do with the fact that Easter was the first "major" holiday in awhile, after the rapid-fire of my birthday in September, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I loved the in-between holidays, sure, (Valentine's Day is a huge favorite of mine.) but Easter was the first one in several months to really include presents, special food, and family get-togethers. It was truly an exciting time.
(These are also a collection of die cuts I had in childhood. Not my photo, but I remember all of these clearly. The lamb was my favorite.)
My parents didn't believe in overloading me with candy. I got some, of course, including one year when my aunt hid candy and Easter eggs around my bedroom as it was raining outside, but I usually got a toy or two, which was even more exciting to me. It wasn't usually anything extravagant; usually a bunny or something else Easter-related, like a lamb or chick, but one year, when I was nine or ten, my parents and grandfather went in on buying me the American Girl doll I'd always wanted, Samantha. (This was back when the dolls cost around $80 each, so they each put in about $40.) I knew I was getting her, and for the days leading up to Easter, I could focus on nothing else. I was so excited about it and wouldn't stop talking about it. The day before Easter that year, my poor mother got fed up and sent me off to a friend's house to play, and even then, my mind just kept on drifting back to seeing Samantha on Easter morning. It was definitely one of the most memorable gifting experiences of my life, and I know I was very fortunate to receive such a gift for Easter.
Not to say that candy wasn't also a part of my Easter celebration, though! I grew up loving Peeps (No wisecracks please, I hear enough of that about my love for candy corn.) and this commercial had me in an absolute chokehold when it premiered, to the point I would imagine myself owning a little all-holiday shop called The Holiday Nook, where this commercial would play on repeat during the Easter season. I even envisioned a weird little animatronic puppet show version. I was obsessed, and to this day, it still bugs me that most of the Peeps merchandise is focused on the bunny shape as opposed to the chicks. The chicks were the OGs! I also wish that single serve Peeps were available to me in adulthood. I have, mostly, lost my taste for them as I've grown up, but once in awhile I crave one for nostalgia's sake.
My favorite candy, though, is actually jellybeans. I love jellybeans of all kinds. I recently found out that Starburst jellybeans actually didn't originate in the late 90s, but I have absolutely no memory of them being a thing until I was in middle school. I was hyped for these things, as Starburst was a huge favorite of mine, and remember talking nonstop about them to my parents. I was devastated on Easter morning when I got plain old JustBorn brand jellybeans instead, and remember complaining on the phone to my best friend at the time that I couldn't believe I hadn't gotten the Starbursts, like I'd continually been asking for. I believe I managed to get an egg full on clearance the next time I was in a grocery store, but the memory of getting the "wrong" jellybeans that Easter still remains.
Oddly enough, I never had a Cadbury crème egg until I was probably around 30...my parents likely thought they were a little too much. But the classic commercial was always one of those comforting things. Usually the first big sign that Easter was on its way, and the kind of tradition that makes your heart leap, when you're a holiday-loving kid and it comes back around every year.
The actual celebration of Easter Sunday varied in my home from year to year. Sometimes we had family over, sometimes it was just me, my parents, and my grandfather. One year, though, my aunt and uncle invited us to an Easter brunch at a nearby hotel, and that was something that's stuck with me all these years. I remember initially being sad that I would miss the Walt Disney World Easter Parade, which used to be televised every year (and, from what I can tell, I believe this year was actually the very last time it was), but I wound up having such a good time, trying all sorts of food from the buffet, exploring the hotel hallways, and trying to guess how many jellybeans were in a jar in the lobby. We only ever did the brunch outing that one time, but it remains a prominent memory for me; one of those things I wish I could go back to and see again.
Easter egg hunts were always also a favorite activity of mine. I loved scavenger hunts of all kinds...I even would sometimes collect tiny trinkets and ask my mother to hide them around my room for me as a little game, when I was little. I would participate in town hunts as well as at school, and I remember being so excited to find a special egg with a bendable bunny inside of it one year. I also once attempted a bonnet parade in town, but it got rained out. We did have one in my kindergarten class though, and I'll never forget my mother and aunt taking me to some craft stores to purchase a straw hat and tons of little Easter related trinkets to glue to it. We marched around the school to a cassette tape of Easter Parade, carried around in a portable tape player by my teacher. That song gets stuck in my head every year around this time, as I remember that kindergarten parade, and also how that song was always used to close out the Disney World parades. There was one year I remember it really got locked in my head, probably when I was about seven or eight, and for weeks after Easter, I was parading around the house, pushing a select group of dolls and stuffed animals around in a toy stroller like a parade float, singing it at the top of my lungs, while contemplating why in the world someone would be so eager to write a sonnet about an Easter bonnet.
I also loved to dye eggs, in addition to hunting for them. I think I was six-ish the first time I dyed Easter eggs, with one of those kits that comes with the pre-done cups that you just add water or vinegar too, to make less mess. That first year, I decided to use the eggs as gifts for my family members that were coming over. I wrote their names on their respective eggs in the "magic" crayon (which absolutely blew my mind in childhood) and dyed each egg in a color scheme I thought the person would like. I was later absolutely devastated when most of my relatives decided to eat them, truly thinking they were going to keep these actual hard boiled eggs as some kind of keepsake. I don't think I really understood that they still were edible. Once the dyeing process was over, though, I hid that magic crayon, along with the little flocked bunny and chick stickers that I couldn't bear to give away, inside my Puppy Surprise, as if they were priceless jewels. I don't know if I ever wound up using the crayon again for anything else, but it felt special and secret. Then, the following year, when we were dyeing the eggs, I was writing on one of them with that year's magic crayon, and cracked the egg because my hands were shaking. I was nervous because for some reason there was a police car driving up and down our street.
My mother and I started making a bunny-head cake every year, probably around the time I hit my teens. His facial features were made with jellybeans I would receive, and one year we made him a chocolate bunny with yellow eyes, like the traditional little chocolate bunnies you see in stores every year. We always messed up on the bow tie/ears part of the cake though, and wound up cutting the bow tie into more of a "collar". Still, though, these bunnies were such a part of my life for several years, and I wish I still had the pictures I had taken of them. Also, I wish I'd had a camera rolling the year my mother took a hammer to a chocolate bunny she couldn't break!
(This is not my photo but a pretty good example of what we would make.)
My mother actually got sick going into Easter, two different years in my childhood. One year, she took me to the toy store to pick out a gift of my own since she hadn't had enough time to "consult with the Easter Bunny" (I chose a pack of Betty Spaghetty dolls), but the other time, before that, was much more interesting. There used to be a pharmacy in town that also sold stuffed toys and gifts and seasonal decor. It was one of my favorite places, and I went there often because it was where my grandfather would pick up his prescriptions. One year, about a week or so before Easter, we walked into that pharmacy and found an assortment of premade Easter baskets, each with a different bunny plushie at the center. I absolutely flipped for them, and my grandfather decided to buy one for me since he hadn't yet gotten me an Easter gift. This was obviously a huge decision for me to have to make, and I don't even know how long I stood there trying to decide which bunny I wanted. I finally chose one, a little brown guy with white around his nose and eyes, and excitedly showed the basket to my mother, who'd gone into the adjoining grocery store, when we all met up again. Well, it turned out that, due to being so sick leading up to Easter, my mother had decided to take the easy way out that year and buy me a premade basket. And, as it would turn out, out of all the different bunnies she could have chosen, she'd already gotten me the exact same one! I guess, at least she knew my taste, but it was devastating, to both my grandfather and myself, to have to go back inside and start the decision making process all over again, choosing a bunny to exchange it for. I think I wound up randomly finding a stuffed bunny that wasn't part of a basket, and asked for him instead. I can't remember if we also bought an empty basket there, or if I found one at home, but I remember putting said bunny into a basket, to achieve the same effect.
I used to love decorating my room for every holiday (though now I'm known for keeping Halloween decor up all year round) and one year, when I was around ten or eleven, I got the idea to create Easter baskets as decor to display on my dressers. I distinctly remember filling three different baskets with Easter grass, and then sitting some of my bunny plushies and some plastic eggs within them. One basket had a trio of Beanie Baby bunnies (who, looking back on it, were probably a gateway to my love for Jellycat Bashful Bunnies), named Hippity, Hoppity, and Floppity. (Hoppity was actually paid for with money my grandfather gave me after winning some money in a Super Bowl pool, I remember that clearly.) Another had a more realistic bunny by the same company named Nibbles, who I believe I'd bought the previous Easter with a gift certificate to a local bookstore that one of my aunts had given me. (The bookstore was the big Beanie Baby spot at the time.) The third basket, I can't for the life of me remember what I put in it, but I remember the design of the basket well. It had pink and purple trim with a hint of yellow running through it. It made me proud of myself, to be able to put together things like that.
It makes me so sad that I don't have the pictures to go along with these stories...At one time, I had some, of the bunny cakes and possibly my decorations, but most of our photo albums were sadly damaged in Hurricane Sandy in 2012. But regardless, it's been so fun to finally have a place to write out these memories, and I hope it's been a fun read. I love to reminisce about my childhood, especially holidays, and I guarantee there will be many more stories to come on the blog. (Possibly even more Easter ones that I may have forgotten!)
I leave you with a picture of a chocolate bunny that I received many times in childhood, and is still sold today:
