Jesus, the Easter bunny, eggs, and a belated Happy Easter!

This past weekend we celebrated probably the most important holiday on the Christian calendar: Easter. And we did it right, with colored eggs and egg hunts, a big family dinner, candy, the whole thing. And we celebrated the spiritual, "important" aspect of the holiday with the folks we church with.

I grew up with all the trappings of Easter--getting a big Easter basket, coloring eggs, egg hunts, the whole deal. Of course we also celebrated the resurrection of our Lord. And the resurrection part was always important to us, and I grew up knowing that was the "serious" part of Easter.

When I became an adult, I went through a particularly virulent (see especially definitions 3 & 4) case of militant Christianity. During that time I was all too eager to tell anyone I could pigeonhole about the evils of pagan-inspired holidays like Easter and Christmas.

Of course, instead of setting the Christian world right, which was my mission, it made me look like a can't-have-any-fun, know-it-all, self-righteous-pig Christian. And, of course, that was a pretty good description of me at the time.

Thankfully, I grew out of that. Now I appreciate the fact that we who are Christians really celebrate 2 Easters--the religious one, and the social one. (The same is true for Christmas, BTW.) And they are both important. I'm not afraid that my kids will confuse the Easter bunny (or Santa) and Jesus. Kids confuse a lot of things. (For a very funny story about kids who are a little confused about the Easter story see this terrific blog.) One of my parenting jobs is to help them NOT be confused about such things.

And to help them have a little fun. Maybe they won't have to go through a I'm-the-world's-most-spiritual-Christian-and-I'm-gonna-set-you-straight phase like their dad did. It's really a huge burden to be the world's most perfect Christian, and very few people appreciate how wonderful you are...

(As you may have guessed, this entire post was just a pretense for showing more pics of my cute kids. They really are adorable!)