Remembering My Easter

Today, March 23, is a special day for me for two reasons. On this date two years ago I lost my father. He had been suffering for years and his passing was not a surprise to any of us, but it was, nonetheless, very hard watching the last vestiges of life pass from his frail body. I am comforted knowing he is with God now and free from the relentless pain he had been enduring for those many years. I couldn't let the day pass without acknowleding him, and remembering what he meant to me in life. If, as I suspect, Heaven has broadband internet access (probably a whole heck of a lot faster than down here) I hope my dad checks my blog today so I can tell him on this of all days that I love him.

The second reason, of course, that today is special is because it is Easter. I remember how much I loved Easter as a kid because of all the wonderful candy I got in my Easter basket. I have always had a major sweet tooth so I think Easter was always one of my favorite holidays. I am still amazed today at how my mother was always able to make sure all eight of us kids got full Easter baskets when she could barely afford to put enough food on the table (Mom and dad divorced when I was very young). Of course, up until I was nine or ten I still believed it was the Easter Bunny filling our baskets, but even as I began to understand it was actually my mother providing the delicious sweets I was impressed at how she pulled it off every year. She always made Easter Sunday special for us and I have good memories of it every Easter to this day.
That brings me to the reason for my post. Are parents today giving their children the same wonderful childhood memories and experiences these days as we got when we were children? If it's not bad enough that more and more people are abandoning the traditional holidays in some unexplainable attempt to remove all traces of God from their lives, but the way holidays like Easter are celebrated these days seems to have lost any connection to their origins. In the case of Easter, to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus. It seems Easter has fallen to the great merchandising machine that gobbled up Christmas several years ago. Just take a look down the Easter isle in any store to understand what I mean. How many plain baskets did you see? It appears now that parents believe their kids won't be happy receiving a huge bounty of candy and chocolates unless they're crammed into a basket bearing the kid's favorite celebrity of the moment. I mean, what doe Hannah Montana or Sponge Bob Squarepants have to do with Easter, anyway? Aren't kids already over-exposed enough to all these "celebrities" with television, video games, magazines, concerts and ipods? Do they really care if they get a plain basket or a basket covered with their favorite celebrity as long as it's full of their favorite candy? I can't help but think that it is not the kids driving this over-commercialization of holidays as much as it is the parents giving in to the marketing geniuses who so cleverly use the parents own vanity against them by subliminally suggesting that their kids dare not be caught with sub-standard Easter baskets while all their friends are toting their "designer" versions? Somehow, I would be willing to bet that once the packaging is ripped away from the basket the celebrity is forgotten in favor of the candy inside. Or, who knows, maybe I'm just too old fashioned.

By: Matt-Speak

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