We took the kids to the neighborhood brunch and Easter egg hunt this past Sunday, and Esme discovered the joy of the hunt. Even as I type this, she's happily munching on the jelly beans from her loot bin. Being only 2 and a half in a hunt for kids 5 and under has its disadvantages. She only found one egg by herself, then the sweetest little boy named Brandon took pity on her and started shoveling his own eggs into Esme's basket. For the rest of the hunt, I surreptitiously stole eggs from Esme's basket and re-hid them for her to find. At one point she looked at me and said, "Mommy, throw another one!" I was busted.
Jacob and I have noticed that other people make assumptions about our religious beliefs when we tell them we went to an Easter egg hunt over the weekend. I was talking to my good friend Courtnay, who responded, "I thought y'all didn't celebrate Easter." I was stumped. Was going to an Easter egg hunt celebrating Easter? We don't consider ourselves Christian or Jewish (or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or any other religion). Jacob, being the good MIT grad that he is, has more of a "science is god" perspective on life, whereas I believe in the mystical and spiritual, but don't believe that any single brand of religion has the sole key to the spiritual world. Both of us believe strongly in morality, and we try hard to teach our children the difference between right and wrong. But major wars have been fought in the name of religion, and we don't support the dogmatic view points that come from associating yourself with one single path.
When we headed off to the Easter egg hunt, none of this was going through either of our minds. We were simply going to a neighborhood party, looking forward to chatting with the neighbors, drinking coffee, and watching Esme discover a fun new game with all her preschooler friends. I'm sure that while most of our neighbors probably do consider themselves Christian, they weren't thinking of religion on Sunday either. They were thinking, "God, this is a gorgeous day to be out here in the redwoods. Aren't all those kids running around cute." "God" in this sense of the word, is a figure of speech, not an evocation. (And, by the way, I saw a family I know to be Buddhist there, and another family that belongs to a local Temple.)
Yet when Jacob told his Mom that we went to an Easter egg hunt, her reply was, "So I guess you're not celebrating Passover." I wasn't even aware it was Passover until I talked to my friend Beca, who was home visiting her family for the holiday. Of course, I wasn't aware it was Easter until I got the email about the neighborhood brunch. If we had gotten an email about a neighborhood seder, we would have gone. And the truth is, I will take the kids to seders when they get old enough to be aware of what's going on. I think it's important for them to understand the traditions of world religions, because it is a way for them to understand different cultures and it might help them later on their own spiritual paths. But I don't think that we need to subscribe to just one religion to give our children a spiritual education.
What about tradition, some people may ask. And what about it? Almost every major religion was founded by an individual who broke with tradition, recognizing that the established institution gets corrupt and needs to be shaken up. The great religious leaders have been mavericks, and I think it's important that my children recognize that and learn to think for themselves. Morality is not something that you achieve by following a religion. It is something you show in your everyday choices. When suicide bombers kills themselves and scores of others in the name of religion, are they making good moral choices? When Christians scoured Europe during the crusades, forcing out the Jews and Gypsies, were they making good moral choices? Does it sound like I have a grudge against religion? Maybe I do.
Our lives are not devoid of tradition. We have family traditions, and since we are a young family, those traditions are still in the making. But I look at composting and planting seeds as our religious traditions, teaching our kids how to be responsible and live in harmony with nature. What does finding a plastic Easter egg stuffed with sweets teach kids? To eat lots of sugar and get cracked out on candy? I don't see the religious element there. The meaning behind Easter, the rebirth of Christ, is religiously significant. It's symbolically and spiritually significant, but is a 2 year old going to get it? I don't think so. Similarly with Passover, it documents the Jewish story that is an important part of the culture. But I don't think Esme would understand it yet. And it's a story that reinforces one of the things about Judaism that I don't really like, which is the concept of the "Chosen People." What does that mean? That all the "Unchosen People" are shite? I thought we were all God's creations, and therefore all connected.
This gets at the root of why religion does not play a strong role in our family. It stresses differences between cultures, and I would rather my children grow up seeing themselves as connected to other human beings and the the natural world around them. Seeing the world in terms of "us" and "them" is what enables us to justify waging war on others. God help my children from ever viewing things that way.
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When you look at the significance of rhythm and routine in the development of a child, we can use the festivals we choose to celebrate as a reinforcement of the rhythm of the year. Easter has the bunny as a symbol because the Pagan Goddess Estrus took the hare as her famiiliar. We exchange eggs because of Spring fertility and birth. Easter is the most earth-bound of the Christian festivals, and not by any coincidence. When Christianity reached northern Europe, the annual ceremonies were placed on a calendar to tie in with celebrations practiced by the pagan tribes- in an attempt to make the new religion more palatable. As a result, there is more than a little natural symbolism in the religious calendar.
I believe strongly that celebrating the seasons with a child provides the same depth of security and awareness that a daily routine gives. Annual repetition of certain activities allows for an understanding which goes deeper year by year.
Our garden on Easter Sunday will be first visited very early by a mother in a white nightie, probably with baby Atticus in my arms. I will choose a tree and tie on painted wooden eggs, dyed blown eggs and simple little fairies made of wisps of lambs wool with acorn or crab-apple heads. I found a nest in the hedge which I have cleaned up and lined with wool fleece and moss, into this I will place some chocolate eggs (lovely little French ones that look like real songbird eggs). The nest goes somewhere in the tree, too. I have a couple of finger puppets of spring creatures that will be peeking out from branches, too.
Our day will be full of the celebration of Spring- traditionally the English wore Easter bonnets bedecked with flowers, and so we will go on a long walk after breakfast picking whichever signs of spring we can find to tuck into the brims of our hats.
Breakfast consists of painted boiled eggs, or coddled ones for grown ups.
We will eat a Simnel cake at tea time, a traditional Easter cake but also my all-time-favourite (We had it at my wedding in Golden Gate Park). It is a spiced fruit cake decorated with 11 balls of baked marzipan (to symbolise the apostles minus Judas).
A tradition we added in California is to cook and eat the Easter bunny. Kids often found the irony delightfully macabre, but I just like cooking rabbit and they sure are plentiful round here. Where we now live is nicknamed England's 'poacher country'.
The day is rounded off with Apple Howling, a tradition of waking up the fruit-trees to get their buds to open. Fires are burned (ideally burning arrows are shot through the branches), alcohol is slopped onto the tree-trunks, songs are sung around the trees and general mayhem ensues.
Easter, for me, is a celebration of awakening fertility and rebirth after the introspection of winter- is it any wonder that both of my babies are born nine months later, only a couple of weeks apart, Spring fever doesn't just hit the birds! I have a festivals trunk with boxes of bits for each season's celebrations. So many of us loved the annual ritual of getting out the Chrismas decorations, fondly remembering the ornaments gathered over a lifetime. Why not provide the same rich experience for our children throughout the year? It can only help them to recognise the passage of time, the value of ritual, and our place in this spiral of life.
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