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!)

Self-motivated to learn...

We are homeschooling our kids. I look at the educational system, especially here in L.A., and I can't imagine sending my kids to public school. But then I think of the responsibility of educating my kids, and it's overwhelming to me.

Fortunately, Little McGyver is really self-motivated to learn. He wants to learn so badly, it's scary. Last summer, when he was 4, he decided he had to know all the alphabet. I mean, he HAD to know the letters. He would burst into tears, crying, "I'll never know my letters!" I, being Father of the Year material, would say something comforting. Something like, "Would you get serious? You're only 4. You've got plenty of time." As you might imagine, this was not helpful at all. He would just walk away from me sadly. By now, he's learned that daddy is mostly good for driving him places, and lifting heavy things. (The same things my wife learned about me long ago.)

In case you're wondering, he did learn all his letters, even though I was next to useless to him. Now, he's learning to read at a truly frightening pace. I think that for him, our job is going to be facilitating his drive to learn. We can encourage him, but he's motivated all on his own.

By the way, the picture at the top of this post has nothing to do with homeschooling. But it is an awfully cute picture of my Little McGyver sitting in our tree...