Lebanon
But for 2-year-old Emmett Hoyt, much of this Easter was about conquering his fear of the Easter Bunny, who joined families at the Enfield Community Building on Saturday morning for a breakfast hosted by the Enfield-Mascoma Lioness Club.
After taking some time to eye the large, cartoonish rabbit warily from the sidelines, and making a few false starts toward its chair, Emmett finally worked up the courage to say hello. He scurried back to his mom, Jodi Hoyt, beaming.
“We’ve been working on this all morning,” said Hoyt, of South Royalton, with a laugh.
She still remembers the terror of being plopped onto the Easter Bunny’s lap as a kid, “so I didn’t want to force him,” she said.
For her, the holiday is less about this tradition or that activity, and more about having fun with her family, especially her kids.
“And it’s fun to wear pink,” she added, looking down at her cotton candy-colored dress.
Several breakfast-goers cited the food as the morning’s main attraction. As organizer Doreen Bowlin said, “We haven’t raised the price in a hundred years. Where else can you get pancakes, sausage, coffee and a drink for five bucks?”
Thirteen-year-old Jon Cattabriga, and his grandfather of the same name, were among those who were drawn to the idea of spending a lively sit-down meal with family and community.
“We’re too old for the Easter Bunny now,” acknowledged the younger Cattabriga, who had come up from Cape Cod for the weekend. “We used to get really excited about it. … Now we’re just here for the food.”
Meanwhile, over in Lebanon, anticipation was running high in Colburn Park, where members of the West Lebanon-based Hope Bible Fellowship were scattering some 3,000 bright plastic eggs over the grass, each one rattling with a piece of candy.
“They’re quite artfully hidden,” joked Pastor Eric Ramage before the hunt, as he sprinkled a few more for good measure.
Once the park was sufficiently and conspicuously dotted, the pre-hunt announcements noted that the eggs had been hidden, and hidden “very well” at that. Eight-year-old Ian Tuttle-Fitzgerald begged to differ.
“No they aren’t!” he yelled back at the loudspeaker. To himself, he muttered, “Everybody keeps saying that.”
In fairness, Ian’s heard all the jokes before; he’s been participating in the hunt for a few years now, and even has connections to the Easter Bunny. “My dad actually knows him,” he said. “He went into the forest and met him.”
This was the fifth year the church has hosted the Easter egg hunt at the park, and Ramage was hoping it would draw people from all backgrounds, not only those who observe the religious aspect of the holiday. To his delight, egg hunters and their families represented a wide panoply of belief systems, including Catholic, Jewish and agnostic.
“I love that,” he said. Though he prefers to leave the Easter Bunny out of church festivities, he also wants to send the message that people of all faiths can have fun with Easter, and can have fun with it in many of the same ways.
“One of my central convictions is, why can’t church be fun?” he said, adding that Easter provides an opportunity to de-polarize people’s attitudes about religion, and send the message that religion is not about squashing or defining joy. He quoted a poem about inclusion that has stayed with him since high school, Outwitted by Edwin Markham: “He drew a circle that shut me out — / Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout. / But Love and I had the wit to win: / We drew a circle that took him in!”
Still, as Reverend Stephen Silver, from the First Congregational Church of Lebanon, said in a phone interview on Saturday, the levity of Easter also carries great meaning for practicing Christians, and it’s important to keep in mind the cultural significance of the holiday.
“As a member of the clergy-industrial complex, I do have a bit of a jaundiced view of the way religion has become secularized,” he said, adding that this is particularly noticeable around Christmastime. “It’s a little sad, from my perspective, when people are talking about the Easter Bunny or Easter eggs and they have no idea what Easter is actually about. … It’s all about hope.”
Because the holiday is so central to all branches of Christianity — it’s day out of which the entire Christian calender grew, Silver said — Easter can serve as a unifying force among denominations, reminding Christians what they have in common rather than what sets them apart.
“It’s a reminder of light overwhelming darkness,” he said. “That life and love have had the final word.”
Though he acknowledged that not everyone shares in the belief that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, Silver does feel that secular Easter traditions can also usher in a sense of joy and renewal that can bring people together. Eggs, and “even the idea of the Easter Bunny in a bow tie, hopping around with a basket … can be seen as symbols for new life,” he said.
For Steve Ketay, of Hanover, the egg hunt was as a good a time as any to create a teachable moment for his kids. Before the hunt, he gave his 7-year-old, Richard, a scratch on the head and told him, “Remember, hey, this is just for fun. It doesn’t matter how many you get.” When the hunt was over and Richard rushed back to show off his haul — all of five minutes later — his dad told him to “take a little walk” around the park to see if anyone didn’t get enough eggs.
“Some families show up a minute too late and miss out,” he said. “You get a little, you share a little.”
Easter’s not only a time to teach his kids about fairness, though. It’s also a good opportunity to reflect on the cultural and historical background of the holiday.
“At home we talk about the Bible, and the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita. They hear about it in school and we think they should learn about it,” he said, noting that many children tend to be curious about the origins of cultural traditions, such as the Easter egg.
“It comes from the Celtic symbol of the universal egg,” or the egg that hatched the universe, he said. Thousands of years ago that egg symbology played an important role in springtime pagan rituals, and may have been adopted by the early Christian church in attempt to encourage conversion.
Like Ramage, Ketay doesn’t incorporate the Easter Bunny into the weekend’s festivities. He’s not against the Easter Bunny — but when it comes to what his kids believe in, “they can decide for themselves,” Ketay said.
EmmaJean Holley can be reached at ejholley@vnews.com or 603-727-3216.