Here comes non-Santa!

I always felt a little bad for the Easter Bunny. 

No, really. He's always way behind Santa Claus, the Christmas Kahuna. Even kids in families that don't celebrate Christmas love Santa, but there's no love for the Bunny there. 

There are a lot of reasons for this.

1) Santa comes to visit at Christmas, when Jesus was a baby. Christmas is fun! The Bunny comes at Easter, after we killed Jesus with agonizing, brutal torture, but He returned from the dead to save us. Kids have a tough time grasping that. Hell, adults have a tough time grasping that. 

2) Santa's got the tunes. I cannot begin to count all the pop songs that mention Santa. What does the Bunny have? "Here Comes Peter Cottontail." There are others, but they're hardly well known. And they never bother to play them on the PA at the supermarket.

3) Santa's mythos is much better developed. We know where he lives, who is married to him, who works for him; we know how he gets around, and even the names of his animals; we know what he does and why he does it, and the methods used in his distribution; we know what he wears, how he keeps his hair, and what he likes to eat. As for the Easter Bunny, we know he brings eggs, hard-boiled or chocolate, and other candy because... I'd have to look it up.* Where does he live? Who are his friends? What's with the Technicolor hen fruit, anyway? Bizarre.

4) Santa is fat and fuzzy when you see him around. On the rare occasions you see people in a big bunny suit, they look like freak show golems made from old bathmats. With those big, dead eyes. Children scream and run. Santa is almost never scary.

5) Santa's got the loot. The Bunny may bring such toys as can fit in a basket, but Santa can come through with a bike. Maybe even a BB gun. On car commercials it seems like Santa might drop off a BMW. Easter Bunny can't do that! He's just a bunny! He can't even drive!

I guess EB will always have to be number two, but he tries plenty hard. So do his helpers. A friend of mine was putting together Easter baskets with his wife for their various grandchildren, and right at the end they found a sawbuck that did not make it into a plastic egg. God forbid all the children got a ten spot and one didn't! So they had to go through the baskets and open every plastic egg that didn't rattle until they figured out which kid had almost been slighted. It's hard work, being an Easter Bunny.

So we salute you, Easter Bunny! As thankless as the job may be, at least you're not the Tooth Fairy, dealing with old teeth. Or the Great Pumpkin. Now that's a crummy gig.

🐰🐇🐰🐇

*According to Dr. Wiki, "Originating among German Lutherans, the 'Easter Hare' originally played the role of a judge, evaluating whether children were good or disobedient in behavior at the start of the season of Eastertide." There's a lot more at the link, but it's all weird.