6 Easy Ways To Ruin Easter

My Dad killed the Easter Bunny.

He didn’t do it on purpose. He didn’t have a twisted, villain-esque background that required a vendetta against the rabbit. His Easters might never have been amazing, but certainly the bunny never did anything directly to cause him harm.

So there was to be no warning of the untimely death of the bunny when we were driving back from the Easter rodeo at Eromanga on the eve of the big day itself (well, the one that counts when you’re a five-year-old and hankering for some chocolate eggs).

It was nearly midnight and there was the flash of a rabbit and then a thud. Kadunk.

It made perfect sense that the Easter Bunny would be out and about. And my Dad confirmed it.

“Well, there goes the Easter Bunny,” he said with the air of ambivalence not usually seen when a father is crushing the hope of their offspring.

I was inconsolable. Easter was the gluttonous dream of every child in the land and here was my father, one parent out of all the parents in the world who managed to ruin it for everyone. He was the patient zero of Easter’s demise. The monster!

But it could be worse. Here are some other ways to ruin Easter (as told to me by various friends).

1. Eat most (or all) of the kids’ eggs before Easter.

You can’t tell me you’ve bought five eggs for each child and they’ve all survived until the Sunday. The Progressive Nibblers among us will laugh in the face of any suggestion otherwise. Of course, the kids will never know that you’d originally intended to give them five eggs so where’s the harm, right? Oh, only the crushing guilt…and you can’t eat guilt.

2. Hide the chocolate far too well before the Easter egg hunt.

If you don’t hide the eggs well enough, you might as well just call the hunt off altogether and retire for the morning with a martini. But, conversely, if you hide the eggs too well the nippers will go hungry and chocolate-free for Easter. You try explaining why on Earth the Easter Bunny would be so single-mindedly cruel as to place an egg so high up in a tree it requires a cherry-picker and several hours to retrieve. If you never get them back, archaeologists will – in thousands of years – finally unearth them and assume our mammals laid foil eggs.

3. Convert to the Easter Bilby, then leave an article laying about that describes them as ‘endangered’.

How inconsiderate. You set the Easter Bilby up as the egg carrying marsupial du  jour and then carelessly let your kids in on the secret that it’s endangered. Try wiggling out of that one.

4. Give the kids those silly sugar eggs instead of chocolate ones.

Maybe this was just me but every now and then a relative would get all fancy pants and send us those coloured sugar eggs. It’s the Easter equivalent of coal in the stocking. I’d sooner eat the coal.

5. Forget entirely that it is Easter time.

Believe me, it’s possible. If you’re not particularly religious, or just terrible with dates and taking contextual clues from supermarket shelves, the best way to ruin Easter is to not have it at all. Last minute sticks of celery or thrown together sangas are not chocolate and will never repair the damage in the minds of the children about the Easter that time (and you) forgot.

Years later (after my own trauma) I found out the Easter bunny wasn’t real. Which made perfect sense. I mean, rabbits don’t keep schedules. That’s just absurd. I guess I didn’t really care who delivered the eggs (it could have been a cat with a wicker basket strapped to its back for all I cared) just as long as the eggs made it.

In all seriousness, whether you are Christian, Jewish, Muslim or any variation in between, the Mamamia team is wishing you and your families a very happy break. Enjoy a little downtime if you can get it! We’ll still be posting occasionally over the holidays.

What’s your Easter wisdom? Share your horror stories too…how did you nearly ruin Easter?

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