Don't they know it's Easter time?
By SANDY BURGHAM
I recently found an old book which had belonged to my sister since childhood. As I opened it, out fell colourful Easter egg wrappings from 30 years ago. Each had been carefully unravelled from a marshmallow egg and painstakingly flattened by her little thumbnail; the collection lovingly kept in her secret book.
I am not sure if we ever really made the connection between the wrapper collection and the significance of Easter but at least there was a sense of preciousness about the event. While we weren't living in a shoebox in the middle of the road, we had but a few eggs to be savoured and we understood that Easter was a special if not a religious event.
Today we live in a disposable society addicted to over-consumption and the colourful foil has no collectable value and, thus, is of no real interest to children.
A television commercial shows some children literally drowning in chocolate eggs, which also seem to be raining from above. I don't want to complain too loudly about conspicuous gluttony at Easter when I buy the children in our family crass merchandised chocolate eggs, courtesy of Homer Simpson, Barbie and Action Man, knowing they will receive more than enough from others.
I would love to know many children actually understand the significance of Easter and the egg. As one of those hybrid pagan/religious rituals, the significance does need some interpretation for children.
While those who attend a religious school or church might be able to make the link between eggs and the resurrection, it must seem tenuous to the rest of them. To most children, Easter is more likely to mean days off school, a chocolate fest, a hair-raising roller-coaster ride at the Easter show, and a mysterious bunny who keeps popping up but doesn't seem to serve any purpose.
The significance of Easter, the preciousness of the celebration and the opportunity for children to think about concepts bigger than their everyday reality is being lost in a sea of chocolate.
Last November, I experienced Thanksgiving in the United States. It struck me that this was a ritual with significance which children could easily grasp. It didn't involve giving anything - except thanks, I guess - but it did encourage a deep obligation for families to get together, the only tangible focus being a meal. It's a ritual that not only feeds the family but also the soul.
It is astounding that some schools frown not only on Christmas carols but also hot-cross buns as if it were a Christian conspiracy to surreptitiously win naive young members through their stomachs.
Apart from the fact that hot-cross buns are usually considered more a lunchbox filler than anything else, is it really disadvantageous if children do understand the significance of the cross?
I have always wondered if the adults who take offence at our children being exposed to spiritual symbols at school also choose to ignore celebrating in any way the event that these symbols represent?
Rituals are important to any society as a way of expressing cultural and value codes, a sense of community and also a point of difference from other cultures. If we don't let children have access to these rituals and allow these rituals to tell a story, we are denying our children opportunities to have access to the big questions in life, and society an expedient way to teach values.
People are forever complaining about over-commercialism. I am sick of hearing at every Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Easter and Christmas that it's just a retail trick to get punters to part with cash. I suggest that consumers themselves have allowed this to happen. Any special day in a calendar year can be either a signal to buy more unnecessary stuff or an opportunity to explore and celebrate the more important things in life.
Whether you veer toward the Christian celebration of the resurrection, prefer a more pagan expression of fertility and the spring solstice (it is unfortunate that we are in the wrong hemisphere) or opt for a home-made interpretation, we need to ensure for our own children that our calendar rituals have a sense of profoundness about them.
Or else what does Easter become? Just another shallow commercial venture for you to complain about.
<i>Dialogue:</i> Sandy Burgham
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