Easter Is The Worst

I am here to tell you that Easter is the least satisfying of all the holidays. Not from a religious point of view, obviously. I’m talking about the holiday from a purely secular point of view.

First off, let’s talk about the color scheme. All pale pinks and purples and yellows and blues. This color palate does nothing for my ruddy complexion, nor the complexions of my similarly ruddy sons. Unlike the moody black and orange of Halloween or the festive red and green of Christmas, none of us have really found our rhythm with Easter attire. Especially because Easter always feels weirdly dressy in the most confusing way possible. Are we doing shorts and pressed shirts on my boys? Am I wearing some sort of filmy dress that will photograph poorly and that will leave me freezing to death because the clothing is meant for August but it is still spring?

Why are we so dressed up? Are we going out to brunch? Easter brunch is rumored to be a bit of a thing, I suspect because no one has landed on an actual seasonal menu for the holiday. Ham maybe? Eggs? Scalloped potatoes with any luck? I’m not even sure if this is a restaurant occasion or, worse, a brunch I am expected to make myself. Eating brunch is one of life’s great pleasures; being asked to make brunch should be considered a war crime. Too many variables, too many dishes.

The one food we all know we will be eating is chocolate but… well, it’s Easter chocolate. I cannot confirm this, but I am fairly confident that chocolate makers add extra plastic to their wares specifically for Easter. The chocolate just does not hit right. I can sometimes get behind a hollow chocolate Easter bunny as long as I’m not required to eat their terrifying candy eyes. The very eyes my youngest son would ask me to “poke out” when he was little because they scared him. As if that solved the problem. I’ll admit that I do love those personalized chocolate Easter eggs from an esthetic point of view, but again, the flavor is all wrong. Cadbury Mini Eggs, of course I’m not talking about you. If there is an Easter egg hunt for Mini Eggs, I will partake. Even if I’m not invited.

Speaking of eggs, painting Easter eggs is the worst of all holiday crafts. It’s messy and labor intensive and the painted eggs almost never turn out right. I’ve tried everything over the years with my kids. I’ve dipped the eggs in dye, I’ve tried stickers and magic markers to make life easier, really anything to get the kids interested. But ultimately we failed. They were bored, we made a big mess, and everyone was disappointed because the big prize at the end of all that work was just a hard-boiled egg.

Also, what is open for Easter weekend? What is closed? Every other holiday weekend, I just know these things in my bones like a flesh memory. When it comes around to Easter, I am only ever about 80% sure. I can never remember if it’s a four-day weekend or a three-day. I can’t recall if I will be able to run to the grocery store on Sunday to get that one pivotal ingredient I forgot for every meal or will it be closed, my eternal worst case scenario. Maybe I never know what’s going on because Easter is never on a fixed date like, say, Oct. 31 or Dec. 25. A day you can just put in your calendar and say, OK we have to plan ahead for this thing. Buy costumes/gifts/food enough for when stores close.

Easter just sort of arrives. One day the stores are all shamrocks and leprechauns, the next everything is pink and yellow and there’s that awful plastic straw stuff to put in Easter baskets being sold everywhere. And it’s up to us, the parents, to decide what we are putting inside these baskets. Easter gift giving is a lawless land where almost anything goes. Gifts do appear to be required but there is no real rhyme or reason to the gift giving. At different stages of my sons’ lives, I have gifted them with skipping ropes, bubbles, sidewalk chalk, scooters, footballs, baseball gloves, a plastic backyard croquet set, short sets, and badminton sets. I never seemed to be getting it right based on a soft market testing of the fellow families at school, and it always felt like I was buying for fictional little Lords of the manor rather than my actual sons.

The Easter Bunny has never been any help. There is no imagined version of the Easter Bunny that comes with a credible backstory we can build upon to encourage magic in our kids’ lives. No clear, uniform explanation for where this giant bunny comes from, why it’s bringing eggs, why it always looks like a grown man in a very obvious bunny suit, or what it wants from us in the end.

Easter in general is a head scratcher of a holiday. This year I’m hoping that a restaurant is open where I can go for brunch, especially if there’s a crab cake benedict on offer, eat chocolate and drink a mimosa. And maybe, just maybe, I’m not buying presents or decorating.

Ah, the freedom.

Jen McGuire is a contributing writer for Romper and Scary Mommy. She lives in Canada with four boys and teaches life writing workshops where someone cries in every class. When she is not traveling as often as possible, she’s trying to organize pie parties and outdoor karaoke with her neighbors. She will sing Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back Time” at least once, but she’s open to requests.