By MARY BETH MAASSEN
Los Alamos
From my personal experience, I much prefer the Easter holiday rituals to the Christmas traditions. Christmas comes with high expectations, expense and stress. Easter is about relaxing and enjoying family.
The thrill of Christmas is over in a blur of gift wrap. The Easter egg hunt can last all day long. As long as there is someone to hide the eggs, there will be children eager to find them.
There is a lot of time, money and energy spent on the planning and preparing of the traditional Christmas Dinner. Easter Brunch is easy-breezy. And you can’t compare cranberry sauce or candy canes to chocolate. Chocolate. Eggs or bunnies. Chocolate wins every time.
Easter decorations also are much easier to manage than Christmas decor. We have a little shed in the backyard specifically to hold all of our Christmas décor. It takes two full days to put everything up, and two full days to put everything away. My Easter décor is just a few fresh Spring flower bouquets. Ta-da!
If I am going to mention holiday flowers, Easter once again has Christmas beat. The Poinsettia is the Christmas flower because it is red and green. That’s all it brings to the table. The lily is the Easter flower because it is buried and reborn, like the resurrection. Summer, fall, winter or spring, the lily is always my favorite flower. The scent is, well, heavenly.
And, let’s just be thankful we don’t have to listen to Easter music for eight weeks of the year. Just sayin’.
And, bunnies hopping about the yard, hiding eggs is just a little less strange than a fat man in a red suit breaking into homes to leave expensive gifts.
As a wrap-up, let’s consider the seasons. As Christmas winds down, you land squarely in January. Cold, dark January. January with its’ pressure to eat less, exercise more, and be a better person. Argh! More stress! After Easter we get to leap into April, with daffodils, warmer days, and sunny skies. April, with Spring Break! No matter your age, Spring Break portends summer, freedom, and relaxation.
Although I would have preferred to have more snow to say goodbye to this year, I am always ready when warmer weather shows up. Hello Spring!
