Easter is coming, and my excitement for the holiday seems to dwindle each year.
As a kid, Easter was certainly a holiday to look forward to. It’s the one day of the year where a giant bunny comes to your house to hide a basket of goodies. A day where you can eat candy before noon and then run around searching for colorful eggs while you’re geeked up on sugar.
The holiday is truly a dream for kids, but, the older I get, the weirder the celebration seems to be. I mean how odd is it that we are honoring Jesus’ resurrection, three days after he was crucified, with an oversized bunny and hard-boiled eggs?
Like many religious holidays, Easter is taken over by commercialism. A holiday that was initially created to celebrate Christ is now racking in an abundance of money.
This spring, each person is expected to spend $151 on Easter, totaling up to $18.1 billion spent on the holiday alone. Even those who don’t plan on celebrating the holiday contribute to the spending. In fact, according to Easter Data Center, 48 percent of those not celebrating still plan to take advantage of the seasonal sales.
Beyond the peculiar concept of Easter and the copious amount of money spent, the holiday starts to seem a little lackluster as we get older. This is because most of us don’t follow the traditional Easter activities anymore. No more hidden baskets or the strong aroma of vinegar-based egg coloring. If I’m lucky, my mom will hand over a six-pack of Reese’s eggs and call it a day.
It’s hard to not think about Peeps when Easter comes to mind. As a child Peeps were a sugary delicacy, but the older I get the more disgusting this marshmallow treat seems to be. I’m not sure if the candy has always been awful and children only liked it because it’s a colorful bunny shaped marshmallow, or they would simply accept any form of confection, but now the treat seems nauseating.
Unfortunately, my grandma has yet to catch on to my revised hatred for the marshmallow bunny, so every Easter I can count on her to supply me with my yearly dose of Peeps, because I don’t have it in me to tell her otherwise.
Although there are many Easter activities that get lost with age, one aspect of the holiday that we can always count on is time spent with our family. Despite our age, we will always take advantage of holidays by using this time to be with the people we love. We may have grown out of marshmallow bunnies and hidden eggs, but our people will always be near on this spring holiday.
Riley Clifton is a third-year communication major.
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