With Easter coming a little earlier this year, I have found myself preparing for what I refer to as the crap tide. The crap tide is the seemingly endless supply of holiday themed junk that will flow into my and your home from countless sources. Can you say pointy stick with a bunny on it? Or plastic egg with a rubber carrot in it? There are the gift bags from school, along with party favors and stuff the other moms have brought in to destribute. 14 kids in the class means 14 little trinkets to bring home. Plus gifts from the teachers and the director. (We are asked to bring things in for every holiday….even Ground Hog’s Day. Not kidding. Ground Hog’s Day.) About 25% edible, 25% art related and therefore usable, and about 50% pure crapola. A pain, but easy to sort through and toss. Not so easy on the landfill. Now, the tricky part comes in from all of the relatives. We spend easter with an aunt who hosts a huge egg hunt every year. The kids love it. They also love the giant easter baskets filled with candy she makes for all of us, including me and my husband. We leave with a car load of stuff. Most of it good, but just a lot of stuff. (In her defense, she has used the same plastic eggs for the past 30 years. Not sure anyone should be eating candy out of them…but thrifty and green.) Then there are all of the other relatives that send “goodies” for the kids. If you have children you have probably realized by now that people like giving kids things….even if there is absolutely no thought as to what the child will do with it. Or how much said child’s parents will hate having it in their home. Not so easy to toss because everyone wants to see the little darling play with x,y, and z.

Am I grateful that my kids are so well loved and thought of? Absolutely. Do I wish such love could be expressed with slightly less crap? Absolutely. But I have learned long ago that you can not change other peoples habits, nor is it really fair to pee on their Easter bonnets because we don’t want to be bothered. Instead, we opt to modify our own tradtions as to not contribute to the sea of junk and yet keep all of the really wonderful things still intact that make the holidays so exciting for all of us.

The Basket- My favorite part of Easter was always the basket. My mother used to load them with everything we weren’t allowed to eat for the rest of the year. We were allowed to stuff ourselves silly….once we found them. After my first son was born I couldn’t wait to create the same excitement for him. His basket was teetering…never mind that he was a baby and really only cared about getting a hold of the eggs in my basket…aka boobies. And then everyone else’s gifts started flowing in and we quickly realized what a huge mistake we has made and what a joint adventure with the world having children was going to be. So we began modifying. Now we still have baskets for the kids to find, sans the plastic grass of course. But now their baskets are filled with more practical things: books, art supplies, matching pjs (my boys are freaks for matching stuff), one thing of chocolate, and one favorite collectible. There is no saying that you can’t put real food in the basket. Dried fruit, nuts, their favorite dinner ingredients even. (I always get Babka in the one from my aunt. Hmmmmmmmm Bakalicious.)

The Egg Hunt-We still do have an egg hunt…we just don’t put any candy or trinkets in the eggs. ( If you do not have old plastic eggs laying about, do not buy any for Pete’s sake. First of all, someone has got to have a set already kicking about their decoration box. Otherwise make paper eggs, or use real eggs, or use old Play Doh containers if you need ones to put stuff in. Also, skip the candy. Do something more creative. My mother-in-law puts math problems in her eggs and whosoever equations add up to the biggest number gets the prize. (She is a math professor.) You could do riddles, or give clues to a prizes location, or the baskets location, steps to a fun recipe that they need to put in order. Make the thinking fun. They will remember that a lot longer than a Hershey Kiss.

A new modification for this year will be to dye all of the eggs naturally. So far I have only thought of 3 colors…red from onion skins, purple from beets, and green from spinach. Anyone know how to make a good yellow, blue, or orange?

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 9th, 2008 at 9:03 pm and is filed under projects. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.