A reader writes:
Is there an ‘official’ Church teaching on the Easter Bunny?
Yes: The Easter Bunny is our friend.
I can explain how Santa Claus is St. Nicholas at Christmas to the kids (even though they now figure they should get gifts on St. Nicholas’ Feast Day Dec. 6 AND Christmas).
Yeah, kids’ll do that. I would if I were a kid.
It still seems odd to me on the great day of Easter Sunday, we give our children candy attached to the really bizarre story that a bunny delivered it.
Yeah, well, I’ve never been a fan of these society-wide conspiracies to deceive small children. Seems like a bad idea to me. Y’know, what with the lying and the deceiving an’ all. I think God said something about that once.
I mean, sure it’s fun an’ all to exploit the gullibility of children, the instinct that God built into them to trust what adults and–particularly–their parents tell them so that they’ll grow up and survive in the world. I mean, with that instinct in ‘em, they’ll believe whatever nonsense you tell ‘em, and you can have a real good chuckle at how they believe the most patently absurd stuff and how "cute" they are when they get all wide-eyed at the prospect of the imminent arrival of a non-existent magical being that you’ve got their expectations up for.
And I know it’s like a big happyfun game for adults to manufacture and plant false evidence that will reinforce their belief in the magical being and reinforce the attachment of their affections to the non-existent bestower-of-gifts.
But it still doesn’t seem to be a good idea to me.
Though don’t quote me on that because the Church doesn’t have an official teaching on this subject. I lied and decieved you when I told you that the Church teaches that the Easter Bunny is our friend. It actually doesn’t teach that. For all the Church says, the Easter Bunny could be the mortal enemy of mankind, ready to ascend from his sunken city of R’lyeh and destroy the human race and inaugurate a reign of murder and madness and mayhem. (Oh, wait. That’s Cthulhu, not the Easter Bunny.)
That being said, if you want a moral, ethical way to allow your children to have some fun with "the Easter Bunny experience," it seems to me that you could simply make it clear to them from the beginning that the Easter Bunny is make-believe and that it’s all just a happyfun game we can play as long as we remember that the real reason for Easter is that Our Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead on that day.
Which is why–incidentally–the bit with the Easter eggs seems to have gotten started: In some places in prior years they didn’t eat eggs during Lent and so you had all these eggs at Easter that you needed to get rid of before they went bad, as many already had during Lent due to absence of refrigeration.
Oh, and remember to teach your children to bite the heads off chocolate bunnies first.
The Church is very firm on the need to do that.
Chocolate bunnies are the enemies of mankind.
