Holiday Hypocrisy

On the eve of Easter, as I tried to find a spot to hide all of the goodies from the Easter Bunny, I began to seriously wonder what was I doing.  I had these same thoughts around Christmas time.

Why have we created the myth of the Easter Bunny?  Is this some cruel teaching moment where we prepare our children for the fact that life if wrought with disappointment?  That people lie and deceive us?  What will Lou think of me when she realizes that it's been me lying to her all along, not some faceless bad-guy from a story?  Speaking of which, what did I think about my parents when I uncovered the awful truth?

Oh, that's right, I couldn't have cared less as long as the gifts kept coming.

But that's not my point. 

My point is that, as parents, we have an obligation to be honest with our children about the world that they were born into.  Of course we want to shield them from disappointment, but disappointment is a part of life, and successful adults need to be able to deal with it.  So as parents we can't shield our children from all of it, the best we can do is to help them to learn from it and move forward.

So, if life is full of disappointment, why do we create more?

The Easter Bunny isn't real, and that's disappointing to learn.  But even more than creating a moment of memorable disappointment, the Easter Bunny serves to create chaos around our house.

For some reason (probably connected to the unattainable image of the mother I should be) I have this need for the house to be perfect before the Eater Bunny, or Santa Claus, comes.  I'm probably going to speed clean before the Tooth Fairy makes an appearance too.  So at 1:30 in the morning I found myself vacuuming. 

I did the same thing right around the same time on Christmas eve.

This time I actually stopped myself.  What was I doing?  Lou couldn't care less if you can't tell that the rug is green for all the dog hair it's buried beneath.  But I'm terrified that in fifteen years we're going to look back on our pictures from this Easter and we'll see dog hair on the rug.  It's as if I'm afraid I'll remember how chaotic these years really are. 

Maybe that won't be the terrifying revelation from these pictures, maybe it will be just how exhausted I look in them.

The hypocrisy sold with these holidays is not the lie of the unseen gift-giver: it's an image of a completely unreal holiday morning.  Easter, and Christmas, with a small child is a roller coaster of emotions, it's not all Kodak perfect.  It's exciting to wake up to baskets of goodies and candy-filled eggs all over the house.  But it's also a bit overwhelming- especially if you just couldn't fall asleep last night for all the excitement.  And I know I'll remember that, but will Lou?  Will my doctored-up pictures truly deceive her?  Will they make my friends think that I've got everything under control?

Maybe this awful lie I'm telling her is not that there is an Easter bunny, but rather, I'm encouraging her to think that we all always had a good time; setting up an expectation for life that isn't realistic.

But probably not.  She knows that we're not always having a good time, but who wants to remember the angry times?  I'm going to keep vacuuming and hope that nothing memorable happens when the house isn't clean, lest I'm unable to document it. 

And I think I'm starting to outgrow the Easter bunny.  Maybe next year his visit will arrive with slightly less fanfare.

But only slightly less.