Happy Easter gran - wherever you are

You know, I was thinking of my grandmother today.  Don’t know why, but I do remember her talking to me once when I was a child.  Well, a few times really, but this particular time, it was just before Easter and I was about 5.  “Katie, if you are very good and eat up all your vegetables, do you know what will happen on Easter Sunday morning?”  I glanced up from my biography of Churchill and replied in the negative.

I remember her smiling then and giving me a big huggly-wuggly-snuggly and confiding that if the above conditions were fully satisfied and if I tried to be that rarest of things – a good girl, a giant rabbit would hop into my bedroom on said Easter Sunday morning and give me a large egg made out of chocolate.

                                          

She then grinned and nodded wisely.  And I can clearly remember thinking, as I stared at her loving face, how absolutely great it will be when I am a grown-up because then I too will be able to take powerful hallucinogenic drugs just like her.  

The Easter Bunny?  The WHAT?  It’s like Santa. 

Tell me – Santa - how did HE ever catch on?  Wouldn’t any healthy society have him locked up immediately?  I mean, just hang on one second and let me get this straight.  An ancient, overweight Norwegian alcoholic in a red suit and kinky boots, with no visible means of support despite his massive wealth, is going to slither down my chimney in the middle of the night and creep into my bedroom to fill my stocking?

I have a gun and I’m waiting, fatboy!

By the way, this Christmas when you see an image of the Bethlehem manger, have a good long hard look at it.  It’s an icon of the supposedly perfect family.  OK, so it doesn’t stand up to even basic scrutiny.  She’s an unmarried mother from a religious minority, he’s a semi-skilled migrant labourer with poor employment prospects.  And Jesus Christ, that cute little kid is going to grow up to wander around the desert in a frock, cause enormous civil disturbance, vandalize a temple and come into serious conflict with the law before being arrested, tortured and nailed to a tree.  I mean they’re not exactly the Waltons, are they?

Something in our culture has gone terribly wrong when we celebrate Easter by inventing a character which even John Lennon in the post Sgt Pepper years, would have found a tad on the weirdo side. 

Honestly, the role models we give kids today.  And we wonder why they grow up robbing cars.