Apr 7, 2023 4 min read

Maybe it was because it arrives long past Christmas, but come every spring, I’ve decide that Easter’s the better holiday. Early Easters, the ones in March, sometimes bring snow, but the later ones, as in this year, come with blue skies and yellow patches of daffodils popping up all over.

The pastel colors of the holiday have always landed with more happiness than the deep greens and reds of Christmas. And Easter brings much less buying and asking and wishing. Where Christmas has come to feel grabby and acquisitive, Easter feels simple and airy, with just a couple of gifts.

Growing up, it was a new dress, a kite and some jellybeans. I’d dig through the plastic grass to unearth a few, hoping they were fruity and not spicy; most years, the Easter Bunny got it right. My basket would hold a few hard-boiled eggs we’d dyed with our grandmother, a Good Friday tradition that she continued long after we’d grown up. She’d cover her kitchen table with newspapers so the liquid dyes wouldn’t stain. It took a while, but we eventually learned that mixing more than two colors would produce an egg the color of swamp mud.

This will be the first Easter that arrives without one or the other of my kids being here. One lives far west and the other far north. I’ll miss the egg hunt and stuffing baskets with plastic eggs filled with jellybeans, things I continued even after they’d grown up. To make myself feel better this year, I sent each of them a bit of money for Sunday brunch, and some jellybeans.

There was a sharp little pang of missing them when I was in the Dollar Store this week. All the younger mothers were filling their carts with baskets and candy and little stuffed animals. (And it didn’t help that they were still out of Junior Mints.) Those stores are the best place to fill a basket, but the week before Easter, the aisles also are filled with reminders that I’ve passed into the next season of parenthood.

For all the past seasons of parenting, I made a spring wreath for the front door, usually a grape-vine circle onto which I hot-glued silky blossoms. It’s too windy up here where I live now, and a wreath would be carried off into the valley behind my house. Instead, I’ll keep the flowers inside this weekend, a vase of Easter lilies that are just now starting to open.

I’ll be hosting brunch for the family on Sunday, a light meal of quiche and pretzel Jello salad and maybe some ham. My mom might bring some marshmallow Peeps, purchased long enough ago to allow them to go stale chewy Peep jerky! It’s the only Easter candy worth the calories anymore.

We’ll FaceTime the kids late enough in the day to factor in the time difference out west, and pass my phone around the table so everyone can say hello. It won’t be the same as the last Christmas holiday, when both kids were home with me. Maybe that is the one way Christmas can be better than Easter. Where Christmas seems to be holiday when the kids must return home, Easter isn’t as much of a must-do.

Sometime today, Amazon will deliver jars of jellybeans to my kids. When they open them and dig in, maybe they’ll get some of that old Easter feeling. And with that first taste, they’ll be glad I sent the fruity beans, because they never did like the spicy ones.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.