Happy Monday after Easter and Passover! Is it Good Monday?
Saturday Jude and I were at Target rushing around to buy stuff for Passover (Saturday eve) and Easter (Sunday afternoon) and out of the blue he goes, "Easter is my favorite holiday, Mama."
"No it isn't," I say. What does he know from Easter?
"Yes it is," he insists, "And I love the Easter Bunny."
And I go, "No it isn't. No you don't." He must be really tired. "You're confusing the Easter Bunny with Santa," I say.
"But Mama, Easter is my favorite holiday." His little legs start pedaling under his familiar red plastic ride.
"Jude, it can't be your favorite holiday. We're Jewish."
"No we're not," he says.
"Yes we are," I say and stop in front of the apples. "Jude. Yes we are."
"I know that," he says. "But I still love Easter."
"Jude, what do you know from Easter?"
"What?"
"What is Easter? How do you know anything about Easter?" Is my memory really that bad? Did we do Easter last year?
Of course I am the one who must be really tired because I forget that he is a five year old American boy and it would not be unlikely if the Easter bunny hopped on over to his preschool this week. That would be to you and me el conejito de pascua.
Of course I am the one who is really tired because what do I expect him to say? Lucky for me, he doesn't ask what it means to be Jewish or what Passover is. Lucky for me, no one gives me a hard time when later that night after Seder and it comes time to look for the afikoman (the hidden matzo which kids hunt around for in exchange for loot, perhaps in lieu of Easter eggs, one might wonder) Jude joins in on the excitement with "Time to look for the matzo ball! Time to find the matzo ball!"
He never found the matzo ball.
And lucky for me that when it comes time to discuss the meaning of Passover round the seder table, the other five year olds know all the answers, which I find myself waiting for year after year and going, "oh yeah... that." I am also pleasantly reminded that these simplified answers are often the ones I most understand, the goldenest of answers, closer to the mouths of Gods that I'll ever come, what for their raw innocent light.
"See there, Jude?" I say, riding the tribal wave, "it's all about freedom."
"Okay!" he says. "Can I have some ice cream?"
Freedom to have ice cream.
The following afternoon, we go to his grandparents house and as soon as we sit down for Easter dinner, Grandma Rose says, "when you finish your dinner, we'll have to see what the Easter Bunny brought for you."
And today he shows them off, one giant pastel plastic egg at a time, closely inspecting their shiny candy contents over and over. He carefully pulls them out of his makeshift Easter basket, a small yellow shopping bag laced with fresh green soft St Louis Park spring grass and lays them out on the dining room table cracking open the colorful lot of jelly beans, stickers, and milk chocolate Kisses of all the finest foils, again and again, only to carefully refill them so he can do it all again... so he can relive the glorious moment of finding each and every carefully hidden one.
How did you explain Easter or Passover (or anything holiday) as a kid? What did you make up in your head about it? Or, if memory serves you not so well, how do your kids or the little people in your life interpret them? Or, how do you explain them?
I'm still not certain, so anything you share will be of great help and highly entertaining. If nothing else,
write about how you celebrated Easter as a kid and who the heck the Easter Bunny is.
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