In your Easter Bonnet…and other musings
Here’s a safe bet:
If you see any Easter bonnets today, they’ll adorn the head of someone under 8 or over 80.
Almost nobody wears them anymore even if they are made with Easter candy!
I think they went the way of white gloves and black patent leather shoes.
But candy? chocolate candy?
Remember the I Love Lucy episode at the chocolate factory? ….
…the speeding conveyor belt with them stuffing the fast moving chocolates anywhere and everywhere?
As a previous chocolate store owner, I say that chocolate beats all of the other Easter candy choices.
And just to be sure I was not prejudiced, I checked out some statistics and found that 70% of Easter candy that is purchased is chocolate, with 90 million chocolate bunnies made for Easter each year! (from the National Confectioner’s Associate)
And how do you eat your Easter bunny?
Believe it or not, they had a survey about how Easter bunnies should be eaten!
76% of Americans said ears first,
5% said feet first, and
4% favored eating the tail first!
So, what’s your favorite Easter candy?
Peeps?
Each Easter season, Americans buy more than 700 million Marshmallow Peeps, shaped like chicks, as well as Marshmallow bunnies and Marshmallow Eggs, making them the most popular non-chocolate Easter candy. And I’ll bet most folks are not using them to make Easter bonnets!
Jellybeans?
We Americans consume 16 billion jellybeans at Easter. If all the Easter jellybeans were lined end to end, they would circle the globe nearly three times.
Easter is the second most important candy-eating occasion of the year (after Halloween) for Americans, who spent $2.1 billion on Easter candy. (according to the National Confectioner’s Association)
In the middle of the commercialism of chocolate eggs and bunnies, it can be easy to forget the true meaning of this special time.
Easter is a time of rebirth and renewal.
The recurring cycles that are marked by the feasts and celebrations of the year have a real value that we acknowledge in our more contemplative moments.
As they come again and again,
they teach us the same lessons from a new point of view.
Renewal and rebirth are the touchstones of spring. We can take this opportunity to remind ourselves to slow down, to breathe, to contemplate, to just be.
9 Comments
In the quiet of the evening, light a candle and look on the flame and think. John 1 – light overcomes the dark. It becomes a quiet time but a strong story. Pass the candle to others to light things for them too.
PS – Chocolate is Number 1 here – ears first seems to happen first.
Happy Easter.
Earl
Sounds like a moving way to celebrate the renewal of the season, Earl.
And me too on the ears first!
I did get a chocolate bunny from my daughter today and I munched on the ears first. They just seem to stick out there as an invitation. I felt a little guilty though for I am a rabbit in Chinese astrology.
Mary Kay, seems like we both are in the majority on ears first! So what does rabbit in Chinese astrology mean to you?
I think it was nice when people wore gloves and hats to church on Easter Sunday. Alas, I don’t think it will be coming back any time soon.
I give my kids lots of chocolate at Easter, so that I can help them eat it. We do the baskets on Saturday, so that we can focus on the true meaning of Easter on Sunday. That way, they get to have fun and then we have a lovely day together on Sunday.
Dee Dee, what a good idea to separate the secular from the spiritual activities for your children!
Definitely CHOCOLATE! For a bunny, it’s the ears first. Jelly beans are nice, too, but really, it’s the chocolate!
For me Easter is part of the Spring rituals – including Beltane. It means a feeling of awakening in the earth and in myself. And warmth again.
Pat: When I first found out I was a rabbit, I was disappointed cause I associated it with being timid. Then I began to think of “Brer Rabbit” and he was very clever and never got caught by that rascally “Brer Fox” so I can see myself that way. Of course there are other aspects but in the interest of space won’t go into them here.
Renewal and rebirth, definitely. We all need as much of that as we can get.