Somebunny To Love

Sweetest folks came by while I was out shoveling a load of shit the other day--holy seventh-and/or latter-day witness rollers or something. Whoever they are, they always come in sets of two, and half of them does all the talking and the other half nods. This set was inviting me to a big celebration of Jesus's murder on Monday, or it might have been Tuesday. I'm not sure which, because it didn't make it on to my calendar, but whichever it was, it was a big deal to my visitors. If you're going to celebrate an execution, you don't want to get the day wrong, lest you seem forgetful, or overeager.

As the talking half explained it, it was essential to commemorate the occasion at the proper time, and that time had something to do with the Passover seder. And that is supposed to happen on the fifteenth day of some month that most people don't even use anymore. She was awfully dismissive of the notion of Easter always falling on a Sunday, although that must happen some of the time, I suppose. I get being a stickler.  I'm old enough to remember when our holidays didn't always fall on a Monday, and it seems to me something important got lost, there. But I would struggle in a religion that required such precision from me. Most of the time, since I retired, I'm not even sure what day it is.

My new friends believed in this date business very strongly, and that's all right with me. I think people should believe anything they want to believe. That's because I don't believe in anything very strongly. It's the people who do believe in things strongly who believe I should believe what they believe.

Here at our house, Easter is celebrated with a veritable shitload of chocolate, plus dinner. Traditionally, it's a lamb dinner, but not this year. The Lamb of God may be alive and well--I'm not the one to ask--but the Lamb of Fred Meyer One-Stop Shopping was sold out. So, pork it is. Also, Sunday it is. We're not particular.

At any rate, my visitors got me thinking about how much else we're getting wrong. When the Easter Bunny shows up on a Sunday at our house, is he endangering our souls? Should we even believe in him? I never actually see the Easter Bunny, but believing in things you can't see has a pretty stout religious precedent.

Well. The Easter Bunny himself turns out not to be biblical after all. In fact, he first turned up in the 1600s in Germany.  Newly minted Lutherans had just cast off a bunch of Catholic pomp and circumstance and they needed new pomp to replace it with, and that's where we've gotten many of our finer traditions--your Christmas tree, some of your better carols, and the Easter Bunny, who was really a hare, if you want to be orthodox about it. He was a bit of a judgmental dude to start with, stern of countenance, and was said to be able to tell if any given little boy or girl deserved to be given eggs. As the years went by the Bunny softened up and flang out eggs to just anyone.

How did the Germans come up with an Easter Hare bearing eggs? Rabbits don't lay eggs. Rabbits don't even lay each other, or so it was widely believed in the 17th century. Every spring there were billions of new baby bunnies that seemed to come out of nowhere; no one ever observed rabbit sex. That's because people are easily distracted and rabbits are quick about it. So people concluded that the billions of little bunnies were conceived immaculately, which they approved of. Christians in general have always been a little sensitive about things getting nailed.

There were problems involved with the cultural export of the Bunny. The Swedes had trouble understanding the German word for Easter Hare and thought they'd said Easter Wizard, so that's who's in charge of their holiday.

Similarly, in parts of Africa, because of confusion over the umlaut, it is the Easter Rhino that thunders into town bearing something like eggs for all good children. They look a little like human testicles. Or so I would like to believe.

A Bunny Tale

Sometimes we don't know our own true natures until circumstance shines a light on us and reveals who we really are. A callow youth dives into turbulent waters to save a child. A skipper gives himself up to pirates to save his crew. A proud evangelist blubbers like a baby when he's caught with a hooker. What struck me most, when the light of circumstance shone on me, was how very bright it was.

I have the honor of living with a 58-year-old man who believes in nothing regular at all--not God, not the invisible hand of the marketplace, not even Santa Claus--nothing except the Easter Bunny. And about him he is fervent. The Easter Bunny has come through for Dave every year of his entire life, and if he couldn't count on the Buns, his entire belief structure would wither like a 401(k). But the world spins on, the Daphne blooms anew, and the house is pocked with hidden chocolate every spring. He and his friend Pootie gambol about like lambs and fill up a large basket.

I am not the Easter Bunny. I am not delusional. No, I am but an assistant and concierge to E.B., responsible merely for opening the door after it has been determined that Dave is deep in slumber. The Bunny is admitted and allowed to go about his business. Only, Dave is pretty tall, and a lot of the best hiding places are hard for the Bunny to reach, so I started helping a while back. And the Bunny has a mighty packed schedule, so I started to help a little more. And, what with one thing and another, and the worldwide proliferation of Christians and all, now it's kind of down to the Bunny letting me know where he does his shopping, and calling it a day. Anyway, we're tight.

One Easter morning, early, 2am, in 2001, I crept out of bed to let the Easter Bunny in, and hung around as usual to help. I don't wear jammies to bed and didn't see any particular reason to put any on; it was a warm night, and all the lights were off in the house. I was nearly through hiding the stash when I decided to stack some truffles up high, on top of the window frame. So I planted both feet a comfortable distance apart on the back of the sofa, reached way up with my left hand to hold onto the window frame, and way up with my right to position the truffles. That left all my sticky-outy bits pressed against the window glass. And that would be the moment a car began to approach down the street, but since the headlights were aligned with the street rather than in my direction, it did not appear to be a problem. Unless the car suddenly swung towards the curb in front of the house next door, which is just what it did, pinning me with a halogen spotlight in an essentially--let's just say it--crucified pose. Our brand-new, perfectly adorable young male neighbors were home from the tav. Alleluia!

I do not know if the perfectly adorable young men were looking up at the window they were illuminating, twenty feet away. But if they were, I am proud to say they saw me revealed as I truly am. The Deputy to the Easter Bunny.