There’s No Easter Bunny? :: How We All Eventually Find The Truth

I was out at the mall the other day when one of the most unsavory characters, in my opinion, made his way out to center stage.  As I looked up and saw him lurching my way, I had to fight back the grimace that was my gut-reaction to the frighteningly awful costume and honestly scary visage that attracted the attention of all surrounding on-lookers.  

Lo and behold, the famed Easter Bunny had arrived on the scene.  

On his throne and surrounded by cameras, he was ready to greet the children that would invariably come his way.  I would think they would be terrified by the giant rabbit/clown, but instead people were ready to pay money to get a picture of their child with this terror.  What does a bunny have anything to do with the death and resurrection of Jesus?  Isn’t Easter about the celebration of Christ’s resurrection as the center point of the Christian faith?  And if that is so, how has it tuned into a celebration of eggs and candy and baskets and bunnies?  I just don’t get it, to be perfectly honest.  I’ve never made the connection or seen a connection and am somehow always creeped out by a rabbit that lays eggs…go figure.

Somehow, though, kids are drawn to this guy in a most mysterious way.  In the same vein as Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, a character that brings gifts is always welcome en masse by people of a younger age group.  They gravitate towards the presents and money, no doubt, but are also amazed at the “magic” that these beings surely possess.  How could they visit everyone, everywhere, every holiday?  They must have powers.  And powers are cool.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I grew up believing all these things were reality.  I marveled each and every time Santa or the Easter Bunny would show up for me while also showing up for everyone else, too.  How did they do it?  How did they pull it off?  I bought everything I was told and never doubted that it was all possible.  So long as I was getting the presents, I was a believer!  And naturally, in my own time, I figured out that it was all just a calculated cover-up.  A little fib.  A game we all play and have been played by. 

But I figured it out.  That’s the point.  I learned on my own that it was impossible for these people/rabbits/fairies to be doing what they were supposedly doing.  It was impossible for Santa to deliver gifts to everyone in one night.  It was impossible for a fairy to trade me money for my nasty little teeth.  It was impossible for a bunny to deliver a basket, lay eggs, or handle presents to give me on Easter.  By age 10, I’m pretty sure, I learned the terrible truth that all this stuff I believed was a complete fabrication.  But I wasn’t sad about it.  I wasn’t upset.  As a matter of fact, I think I somehow knew it before I asked the question.  I knew.

Deep down, I knew none of it was true.

Where did that knowing come from?  Where did it originate?  Thinking back, I came to the realization days before I ever asked my Dad, “Santa’s not real, is he?”

“No, he’s not,” he replied.

And that answer led to the systematic unravelling of all my beliefs in any gift-giving entity.  They were all fake, then.  It was all just a nice idea for kids.  It was all a lie.  Deliberate.  Calculated.  Wide-spread.

And it didn’t crush me.

Why not?  I mean, if someone were to prove beyond a shadow of doubt that my parents were not my parents, I would crumble underneath a truth that heavy.  If I were to find out that my friends weren’t my friends at all, that would hurt pretty bad.  It would be devastating.  But this revelation didn’t spur any of those emotions.  Why?

Because I think there are things that we know are true and things that we know are false.  Our in-born barometer sizes up what is real and what is fake.  We determine, at some point, that magic powers don’t exist, that we really don’t know about life in outer space, that super heroes don’t really have super powers, and that the other worlds we imagine don’t really exist.  Somewhere, somehow, our maturation process sorts these things out.  And amazingly, it doesn’t happen with people sorting it out for us.  We figure it out on our own.  We decide for ourselves.

It’s funny that, in the same way we deal with Santa, we have to eventually deal with Jesus.  The stories in the Bible are honestly the sort that raise eyebrows and questions and doubts.  They push our ability to comprehend and understand.  They seem fictitious sometimes.  Yet, we somehow don’t relegate our knowledge of God and scripture to the same place as Santa.  Why?  Weren’t we told that both were real?  Weren’t some of us fostered from a young age with a blind faith in both?  Don’t we see movies and hear stories about both that just persuade us to “just believe” and things will work out ok?  So what is the break?  Where does our reasoning decipher the real and the fake?

I don’t know.  Somehow, though, we sort it all out.  And where we discard the goofy belief in a bunny that lays eggs, we hold tight to the one about a Savior, a cross and resurrection.  By a power that is greater than you or I, we are given the innate ability to reason, to weigh, and to judge what is real.  Sometimes it is with evidence and fact.  Sometimes it’s just a gut feeling.  But this truth that Jesus is our Savior, that He did die and He did rise again, finds it’s way into our very being in a way that we just can’t grasp or comprehend.  It is a knowing that is far beyond our ability to prove or factualize.  It is spiritual.  And this is what separates Jesus from The Easter Bunny.  Both are stories that, as adults, we may struggle to believe.  Both are characters that, if we aren’t careful, find their way into the fiction sections of our minds.  Both are written off by many.  But Jesus is real.  He is who I celebrate on Easter.  His death.  His resurrection.  His life that is alive in me and anyone else who calls on His name.

So no, there is no Easter Bunny.  But there is Jesus.  And somewhere along the line, just as we sort out that there’s no way a bunny could do all those things we wanted to believe, we also sort out that there is a Savior who does do all those things we so desperately need to believe…and that’s why I celebrate Him.