Keep Your Bunny Off My Lawn – A No-Easter-Bunny Easter

It’s not just Mr. McGregor who shoos rabbits from his property. This morning, no bunny visited our home. No eggs were hidden. No baskets were filled.

We are a “no Easter Bunny” home.

And while we do all dress in matching outfits on Easter (so, I go a little overboard on my Easter sewing), we aren’t part of a cult. We are a TV watching, public-school attending, generic family.

We just keep things simple.

Our Easter is focused on the morning spent at church together.

We don our brightly colored dresses and bowties and join our friends and community in a celebration of hope and life. The resurrection of Jesus is everything to our family. It is the context in which we operate – it is hope in despair, joy in sorrow, healing in brokenness. That is what I want to resonate today.

Easter baskets and eggs are just one more thing for this busy mama to do and we certainly don’t need any more small trinkets or sugar around here. Often families opt not to have the Easter Bunny visit their house because they don’t want to distract the kids from understanding the religious meaning of Easter.

While yes that’s true, honestly, that’s not the main reason. My kids are perfectly capable of treasuring the Easter narrative and throwing plastic grass out of a basket on Easter morning. Those are separate things.

It’s me.

It makes my heart focus on the stuff of Easter and not the incredible message of Easter that is so central to my life, my faith, and my family. It gets me caught up in the doing of superficial things and not resting at the cross. 

I’m not anti-bunny.

I love all the fun celebrations of spring that come along with Easter, just don’t put them on my Easter Sunday.

This week my kids hunted eggs at preschool, at church, and in our neighborhood. They squealed with delight as they opened each egg. My daughter dressed like a bunny one day and used hopping as her mode of transit for the entire day (my greatest apologies to her preschool teacher). My son wore his brightest spring colors. There is a large bowl of jellybeans in the kitchen that I have already eaten all of the black ones out of. 

The no bunny is kind of a non-issue for the kids.

The few times in the last 6 years they have asked about it we have simply noted all the egg hunting they have done in the week prior to Easter and said the Easter Bunny didn’t need to come to our house. And we move on. We keep it simple.

Like most things in parenting, it’s about striking a balance that works for you.

If baskets and bonnets and bunnies work for your family, I commend you. However, if they don’t work for you, I want to affirm you that it’s ok not to do them.

Do the things that realize your vision for your family. Do the things that bring joy to your home. And be free not to do the things that don’t.

In case you are curious, we strike a similar balance in December but that’s another post for another season.

And the Toothfairy…well, TBD if she will make an appearance but since it could involve glitter, chances are she will 😉