Hello and welcome to Monday! Hoping to prolong the warm, fuzzy feeling from your holiday weekend, I’ve put off my “what aspiring journalists should be good at” column for a week.
Instead, let’s take a closer look at Easter’s second-most loved (hard to compete with Jesus in a popularity contest) representative, the Easter Bunny.
Children love this bunny. We see happy renditions of him (her?) every year (the more the egg dye kit costs the better the rendition looks, but let’s be honest, rabbits, except Bugs Bunny, look terrible when anthropomorphized) over all kinds of merchandise. He’s seen as a beloved figure because he brings neat things to children. Free of charge, no less. Let’s take a look at the data, though.
The Easter Bunny is ostensibly bringing the colored eggs, candies, small toys, etc. to millions of children to make them happier. Why does he have to hide them though? Is he a jerk? Think about it. Santa Claus also brings things to kids and he puts them in one place, under the tree. You even control where the presents are going (tree placement). Why can’t the Easter Bunny put his basket of goodies under a shrub of some kind?
I’ve heard a counter-argument for this: He does it to provide kids with a game to play in addition to giving them goodies. Nuh-uh. Not buyin’ it. Have you ever heard a kid wake up on Christmas and ask their parents to scatter their long-awaited gifts throughout the house in an effort to frustrate and perplex them? I didn’t think so. The Easter Bunny is like the bully in elementary school who hid your lunchbox.
But we’re just scratching the surface.
Even if we’re willing to overlook the fact that the Easter Bunny is more like a sadistic older cousin than the nice uncle he’s portrayed as, he’s still distributing a billion friggin eggs every year. And we know they aren’t his because rabbits can’t lay eggs. So how does he get them? Do you think he pays for them? He has no source of income, he’s a woodland creature!
The Easter Bunny steals people’s children.
If leprechauns started stealing babies to go along with their pots of gold, do you think people would stand for it? But no, Mr. Bunny just steals children from innocent farm animals and we’re fine with it because KFC will make sure the protesters don’t get too out of hand.
(Tangent: Are the eggs for Easter based on whatever region you’re in? Does this mean they use ostrich eggs in Africa? Because that would be awesome. One egg would hold enough candy for the entire day! Okay, back to the column).
Moreover, the whole reason the Easter Bunny was chosen as the mascot for this holiday is because rabbits are a fertility symbol. Not only because they, uh, seal the deal pretty quick, but because when spring (read: Easter season) rolls around, they’re in heat.
So assuming we don’t want a cruel, horny thief delivering baskets to the kiddies every year, maybe it’s time to look for a replacement.
The egg situation requires the most urgent fix. Egg-napping is a no-no (in that it isn’t okay to take them; I’m totally cool with eggs that want to take a siesta). To this end, some kind of avian representative should be brought in.
I nominate Big Bird. He’s big, he’s a bird, and nobody is going to question where the eggs came from.
Problem: Big Bird is not cuddly. Bunnies are at least fun for kids to play with. Birds have more unpleasant excrement and nowadays are liable to carry some kind of terrible disease.
Solution: Big Bird gets paired with a golden retriever puppy. Anyone that doesn’t like puppies is some kind of terrible monster. Golden retrievers are also fairly common, so it’s not like they’re hard to find (Easter’s accessibility is important).
But we keep the chocolate bunnies because they’re delicious.
RICHARD PROCTER will save the Santa Claus/sweatshop labor debate for another day. Send your talking points to rhprocter@ucdavis.edu.
