Tales of the Rabbit

Does any child really believe in the Easter Bunny? In the comic strip "For Better or Worse," young Michael has been having existential doubts, but today I see that he's happily dyeing eggs, together with his younger sister.

I can't remember ever taking the story seriously, deep, deep down in my infantile heart. My folks and I sort of pretended that I believed, and that they believed that I believed.

Santa Claus was something different. That story had some emotional resonance with me. It seemed to state some real truths about life as I knew it. Santa lived away from civilization in the remote Arctic. The newspapers offered Arctic weather reports on Christmas Eve, advising readers as to any navigational difficulties Santa might encounter. The post office accepted letters directed to him. Santa was able to visit an amazing number of homes in one evening, it's true, but then that was the nature of Santa -- just like God, who could listen to several billion prayers at the same time and not get confused. Santa wasn't part of Christianity, but he coordinated his activities with the Christmas story.

Santa was cool, and I didn't really stop believing in him until I was ten, long after I could describe to you the details of all nine (at the time) planets, give you an accurate figure for the speed of light in a vacuum, and explain to you the location (in my capacity as a stamp collector) of Afghanistan. I began having suspicions, admittedly, but it wasn't until a fighter pilot in a "Blackhawk" comic book spoke the fateful words, "I feel like I did the day I learned there was no Santa Claus," that I firmly put aside childish things. That ended it. The Blackhawks knew what was what, even if my parents didn't.

But the Easter Bunny? A rabbit that went door to door delivering candy to kids while they slept? A bunny that either took eggs from chickens or (OMG!) laid them himself? Come on! This story didn't fit into anything I knew about real life, and it had nothing to do with what we learned at church about Easter. I loved Winnie-the-Pooh, but I certainly never thought that a stuffed bear really lived in a forest in England, with pots of honey on his wall. The Easter Bunny was another Pooh Bear -- loveable, but clearly on the child's fiction side of the line between fact and fiction.

Or am I just projecting my present-day cynicism back to my early childhood? A little, maybe, but I'm sure the Lapin de Pâques never really played a major role in my childhood iconography.

But if he did/does in yours? That's totally cool! May the Easter Bunny bring you once more his colorful and tasty bounty.

And Happy Easter!