“I don’t think I believe in the Easter Bunny anymore,” said a small voice from the back of the car. There was absolute silence at this disclosure. The older children knew what was happening, and looked rueful; the youngest one was amazed, and turned to her sister with an expression of indignation.
“Sweetheart, I understand you,” said the grown-up behind the wheel, glancing meaningfully into the rearview mirror.
“Though, if there’s no Easter Bunny,” the grown-up went on, lightly, “it sure is hard to understand how all that chocolate gets strewn around the house every year on Easter morning.”
The youngest child found such waffling intolerable: “Well, I believe in the Easter bunny,” she announced. “You should believe in the Easter bunny. You have to believe in the Easter Bunny!”
The agnostic shifted in her seat, and you could tell she wanted to express her own insights without spoiling the smaller girl’s illusions. “Well, OK, if there’s an Easter Bunny, why does the supermarket sell the same candy that we get in our baskets?”
The little girl smiled. That was an easy one. “Because that’s where the Easter Bunny gets the candy, duh!”
Everyone laughed. “Plus, maybe some people have brothers who eat all the Peeps” — an older girl elbowed her brother, who last year had eaten all the lurid sugar-frosted marshmallow chicks before anyone else woke up — “so their mother has to go to the supermarket to buy extra for everyone else!”
The subject soon subsided, but it’s clear that the jig is almost up. Evasive parental demurrals only work so long to keep clandestine the true identity of the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.
In certain no-nonsense households, of course, such fantasies aren’t entertained in the first place. I once knew a family that banned all tickling, because even if the victim was giggling — even if he was having fun — he had been put in a subordinate position, subject to the unhealthy expression of physical aggression.
As you might imagine, that particular family did not entertain false ideas of egg-distributing rabbits or polar-dwelling stocking stuffers, either. The emphasis was on rationality, and hard, observable facts, and when the mother learned that she was expecting a second child there was no malarkey about the stork making a visit. It is impossible to say whether her detailed explanation to her son of how Mommy and Daddy made the new baby accounted for the boy’s enduringly shellshocked expression; I rather thought it did. He was 4. A stork probably would have made more sense to him than the crazy things she described.
To each parents their own peculiarities, I suppose. That most families engage in some illusion seems a kindness. In the life of every child, eventually the Easter Bunny is unmasked; but it’s only one of the veils we must surrender with maturity and surely one of the least consequential. And we’ll still have the consolation of jelly beans.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
