Easter baskets

Who remembers way back when on Easter morning going throughout the house hunting for a basket full of all sorts of treats. My childhood Easter baskets were full of foiled eggs and jellybeans alongside a chocolate bunny and a white chocolate cross. There was also assorted candies as well as hard-boiled colored eggs. Well, here is another memory. Who remembers dying those Easter eggs the night before or even a few days earlier? There was a brand called Paas that does still exist today. I remember seeing the tablets dissolve and couldn't wait to dunk an egg or two, and usually getting my fingers dyed too.

Also, who remembers an Easter special on television named 'Peter Cottontail is Coming to Town'? This was the springtime version to 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town' that even had the same mailman but delivering letters to the Easter bunny asking all sorts of Easter related questions like 'Why does he dye the eggs and hide them? or something like that. This one is not shown too often now-a-days though. It was a fun one to watch for it was cute with all characters and even that title song that still rolls through my head even today.

After finding our Easter baskets and eating a few selected pieces, which mine was always two or three foiled eggs and few jellybeans and yellow ones at the time were my favorites. It was then time to head off to church and learn the real meaning of this Easter holiday for the Lord is Risen. The church was always packed back then, and I know that most of the people only showed at Easter and Christmas, but I remember we may have not gone every Sunday, but we did manage to go more than just on these two days. Easter was the time yes for fun and yes for family and that Easter meal of ham and scalloped potatoes and usually some kind of vegetable.

I don't remember my hometown having an Easter parade, but they probably had one we just didn't go see for by the time church and communion was over it was usually time for company to come and have dinner and celebrate for Eastertime is a time of family to realize what is really important in living one's life. It is not about the how much candy you have in your baskets or the fancy new clothes that some people bought for the day, as a long time ago ladies bought new hats, or some would say Easter bonnets to show off or men to show off their new suits. Why did we have to always get new clothes for this day? Was it just for vanity's sake? Easter was not the time of our own vanity, but to learn the 'why' to living the right way.

So, when Easter is once again over, and the candy has been eaten and the leftovers of the meal is stored in the refrigerator and the company has gone home we do realize the real meaning of Easter. It is not all the decorated plastic-colored eggs or what kind of presents that some of us received or even the chocolate bunnies that have lost their ears or tails it is all about what makes us human for even with all our faults we are truly accepted by Him our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for without him who are we really, but just a body going from day to night back to day in cycle that breaks when we realize Easter is all about him and us continuing to learn about Him.