If the basket your child is tucking into right now is anything like the one my son just got, the milk chocolate bunny and the Zitner's Butter Krak eggs are in a battle for space with toys, clothing, and nonedibles of all kinds. Maybe yours has a new Wii game, or a Webkinz. Perhaps the basket is full of candy, but there's a new bike sitting next to it.
Somewhere along the way - probably when we parents started blaming the Easter bunny and the trick-or-treat bag, rather than ourselves, for childhood obesity - Easter became another gift-giving holiday. When I was a kid, the best part of Easter morning was deciding whether to attack the big egg in the middle or head straight for the chocolate bunny's ears, not wondering which new Wii game would be tucked in there, too. Kids today cannot live by Cadbury eggs alone.
These days, the idea of doing what our parents did - handing a child a basket full of chocolate and saying, "Here, have at it" - seems irresponsible, unless maybe it's organic dark chocolate and in 100-calorie packs. But what of replacing the expectation of candy with the expectation of yet more toys and gifts - is that just irresponsibility of another kind?
Over the last month, the front aisles at Target and every dollar store in the land have been stuffed to bursting with Easter knickknacks, along with non-holiday-specific springtime-themed tchotchkes in case you want to get into the holiday spirit but don't actually celebrate Easter. This year's big Easter basket-timed DVD releases - Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie on March 11 foremost among them - were ready to fill in any empty space that might have been left alongside the Peeps.
