By Pam Stone

After hearing what I thought I heard on the local news as I was leaving the living room with a basket of laundry in my arms, I had to do an abrupt about-face and rewind in order to be clear.

 

Yes, that’s right, an agency that provides the Easter Bunny for shopping malls, including our local one, was under scrutiny for not doing a background check on its employees and it turns out one hired bunny had been prosecuted as a sex offender.

 

Knowing this is Easter weekend, the time of year when Christians all over the world celebrate the ascension of Christ, can I just say this?

 

Can we get rid of the Easter Bunny?

 

Do we really need an adult dressed in a not-so-hygienic, furry get-up with a giant, fiberglass head and ears to sit in the mall for over-priced photo ops with our kids? Really?

 

I have such sweet and simple childhood memories of Easter that have nothing to do with a giant mall rodent: the dying of hard boiled eggs in food coloring with which my mother would then create a centerpiece for the dinner table, a small woven basket filled with ‘grass,’ a handful of jelly beans and the obligatory chocolate rabbit.

 

And as I was growing like a bamboo shoot, generally there had to be a new dress for church, too, which I detested. Feeling very much like ‘Scout,’ in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ on her first day of school and relegated to wearing a frock, the thought of having to endure an entire day trapped inside an itchy, polyester, number with a stiff, crinoline skirt and a wide brown sash ending in a ridiculously large bow was nothing short of torture.

 

“It’s so babyish!” I cried, when my mother brought this monstrosity home from Sears.

 

“You’re still a little girl,” my mother replied.

 

“I’m 12!” I howled, “And I’m 5′ 7.” I don’t even get carded for buying beer and you want me to wear something for a six year old!”

 

“I wish you’d tell your father to buy his own beer,” said Mom, not missing a beat, “Now, listen: I’ve been shopping all day and have the house to clean and the ham to cook and I am not returning this dress!”

 

I lost that round and, mortified, wore the vile garment to church, declaring to my mother that she may as well stick a bonnet on my head and a bottle in my mouth for accessories.

 

But thankfully, there was no giant rabbit on whose lap I was ever supposed to perch for a photograph. That surely would have resulted in years of therapy. It’s just too creepy, especially when you consider that rabbits don’t have laps in the first place.

 

When I was broadcasting my radio show, each year, the week before Easter, there was an annual, station-sponsored, enormous egg hunt somewhere near Charlotte and tons of kids turned out with their weary parents in tow. All they wanted was the chocolate and Chinese-made trinkets in the plastic eggs scattered all over the soccer field. When the Easter Bunny showed up, I cannot remember a single child being happily entranced. They cried, they screamed, they resented the odd, six foot interloper that stood between them and their sugar rush.

 

I say let’s keep the Easter Bunny a bunny. Let’s keep him a sort of Beatrix Potter, Peter Rabbit ideal, hopping sweetly down country lanes dressed in a little blue jacket and dodging traffic in suburbia, delivering charming baskets to children filled with Cadbury eggs along with the highly anticipated mixture of sugar, corn syrup, potassium sorbate and the same ingredient used in car wax, carnuba.

 

Also known as Peeps.

 

Because some things are sacred.