Predictable

Pearl's first proper Easter has been a success. Somewhat. She isn't a chocaholic (unlike her mother), so while she was very pleased to have people giving her gifts all day, she seemed disappointed that they were all just chocolate underneath the boxes and foil. Like I tweeted (with some incredibly poor grammar - one must not tweet while distracted) earlier, she ate more peas than chocolate yesterday. She opened up all the eggs and put them in a little bucket, and just carried it around. She liked playing with the toy bunnies her grandparents bought her. She loved the egg cup and the plate and spoon, and the set of books. She loved the Easter ring that her Daddy gave her:



She enjoyed baking the chocolate fudge cake for dessert on Sunday, and making the chocolate nests. Making biscuits in the shape of bunnies was the highlight of her week. But, yeah, the chocolate thing confused her I think! People were very generous, so I think she'll be living off Easter's supply of chocolate for a good while yet.

My friend Alex blogged about her feelings about Easter and its mixed meaning and messages. That really got me thinking. I grew up in a Catholic family where Easter was the whole shebang, starting on Ash Wednesday and going through lent until He rose again. It wasn't that my family were overly religious, but we went to Catholic schools where it was hammered into us. We'd have new dresses to go to Mass on Easter Sunday, but when we got home my mum had always got us Easter baskets with some kind of gift and chocolate combo. I know what Easter is meant to be about, but I know what it has come to be about for most modern families. One of my friends (in fact, quite a few) posted on Facebook complaining about how children these days were taught that the Easter bunny came like Santa to leave chocolate. And how nobody understood the 'real' meaning behind it.

Like most people I have a lot of opinions about a lot of things; but it's only been very recently that I've begun questioning the things I was brought up to 'believe'. My feelings about religion change almost weekly, depending on what I've read, my frame of mind, or who I've been talking with. I know that I made the conscious decision to stop going to Church, and not to get Pearl christened. I know that I am probably closer to Atheist than the Catholic that I was brought up. But still the Easter debate of Jesus vs. Bunny did cause my brain to go into overdrive for a moment or two. I quickly told my brain to shut the hell up, and just did what I knew Pearl would enjoy.

We bumped into the Easter bunny in M&S the week before the big day, and he gave Pearl a chocolate egg, so when we gave her the eggs on Easter Sunday she made the connection herself that the "bunn abbat" had sent her the chocolate. She is too young to understand anything about Church, we have never taken her to Church. I will explain it all to her when she is old enough, but for now it was enough that she enjoyed the time with all her family gathered together. Running around with her cousin, eating peas off everybody's plates during Sunday lunch. And of course, unwrapping all that bloody chocolate.

Hope everybody else had a lovely extended weekend.

(Re-reading this, I find it noteworthy that while I can try and enlighten myself about all sorts of things, it's hard to change your habits about capitalising words when writing about religion!).