Every holiday has its traditions and even a few quirks. Our two major holidays were Christmas and Easter. One Easter became a family legend.
When I was very young, my family of eight lived in a three-bedroom apartment in low-income housing projects. While we enjoyed Christmas rituals, the environment made us deeply suspicious of Santa Claus. We didn’t have a chimney, and in any case, opened some gifts on Christmas Eve, when the fat man couldn’t possibly have finished his rounds. So we six kids shared a certain skepticism about the whole thing. When you live on the top floor of a high-rise building, there are logical questions about how Santa, his sleigh and reindeer would bring gifts to the apartments below after landing on the roof.
It just didn’t add up.
Inexplicably, Easter did. Somehow, it offered traditions we could readily grasp. We totally understood that the Easter bunny would come hop-hop-hopping down the dank corridors of the grungy building to deliver baskets with candy to each apartment.
We also knew we would all go to Mass together later at St. Francis de Sales Church on the east side of Buffalo. My brothers would be decked out in ties and we four girls in hats and dresses for which my mother somehow found the money. If we were in luck, the weather would finally be mild, with the worst of the city’s legendary winters behind us.
But before religious observances took place, there was the most important ritual of the holiday: Finding where the Easter baskets were hidden.
We four girls would emerge from the bedroom we all shared to look for the small baskets holding eggs and chocolate rabbits concealed behind the living room couch, on top of a kitchen cabinet or maybe even in the oven where someone had hidden them.
Unlike our open questions about Santa Claus, we believed in the Easter Bunny.
That’s because we saw him. Mr. Bunny himself.
It happened one year when we all got up in the morning to creep as noiselessly as possible to find the baskets. We didn’t want to wake our parents. Finding the baskets was much more fun without adult supervision.
As we emerged from our bedroom and approached the living room, we could hear snoring. Had Dad fallen asleep on the couch? We wondered.
My sisters and I rounded the corner and stopped, gaping at the large, white, fur-clad form stretched out before us. His long, pink ears lay flopped over one arm of the couch. His snores echoed in the room.
It was the Easter Bunny, in the flesh. He must have been so tired from delivering all his baskets that he fell asleep. Right HERE, in our very own apartment.
We consulted each other quickly. Should we wake him up? What about all the baskets he had yet to deliver? We were so intimidated by the sudden appearance of this mythical creature that we backed away, and ran into our parents’ room.
“Mom! Dad! The Easter Bunny is asleep on the couch!” we yelled. Our father awakened instantly and nearly hit the ceiling, “Good God!” he roared. “You kids get back to bed!” he said, hustling us all back to our room. Then he darted in the direction of the living room.
It was all over in a half hour. Dad said the Easter Bunny just needed a nap in the middle of delivering so many baskets. Dad woke him up and sent him on his way so he could deliver all the rest. Questions, we had questions. But the more we asked, the more Mom and Dad just shrugged. The Easter Bunny had a lot to do, they said. He got tired, that’s all.
So for years, we kids didn’t believe in Santa Claus, but were total, loyal and fervent believers in the Easter Bunny, whom we had seen with our own eyes.
Eventually the real story came out.
After we kids went to bed that Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, there was a knock at the apartment door. Our Uncle Jack had attended a party nearby and he thought it would be funny to attend as the Easter Bunny. So he scrounged up a costume, and was so delighted with it that, on the way home, he stopped by our apartment to say hello to my parents. They all thought it was hilarious.
Still wearing the costume, he downed whiskeys with my parents as they talked and laughed. And sometime during the evening, Uncle Jack, still wearing the bunny outfit, passed out. My parents went to bed. Uncle Jack, aka the Easter Bunny, slept the whole night through until the awe-stricken chatter of little girls and the roars of my father woke him up.
It has remained part of our family folklore. You can keep your department store Santas, but when you see the Easter Bunny sleeping in your own living room, that calls for casting off all doubt and denouncing the cynicism of youth.
After all, seeing is believing. And who knew that bunnies could snore so loudly?
When I was a kid, my grandfather and I would take a ride every Sunday afternoon. We lived in the small town of Huron, about 10 miles from Sandusky, where my grandparents lived. The rides were the highlight of my week, because he would let me steer the car (or “drive” as I called it). We often went by a marshy area on the shores of Lake Erie and always passed a little shack way back off the road, and grandpa told me that was where the Easter Bunny lived. Of course I believed him, because he was my favorite person in the world, and he knew everything! For years I believed that story, and when I was old enough to know better, I was driving past that area and told my friend that we’d just passed the Easter Bunny’s house. She looked at me like I had 2 heads, and all of a sudden I realized I’d said that out loud! I could never go by that place without thinking of grandpa, and all the wonderful times I’d had with him on our Sunday rides.
What a great family story! I can see how you'd believe if you met the Easter Bunny in the flesh -- er fur.