A hippity hoppity history

On ce April rolls around, there are two things you can count on every year. There’s going to be enough wind to fly kites, and the Easter Bunny will be making an appearance. This year, as a preview to the annual kite flying season, the wind kicked up to about 100 miles per hour on the last day of March and blew over a 60 foot pine tree in my front yard. It’s hanging up on the corner of my roof. No, I have no idea how much damage it did up there yet, and yes, I have some tree guys coming out to remove it. We can’t see what’s ruined underneath it until we get it out of there. The good news is it missed hitting the motorcycles parked in the driveway by about six inches. Yeah, spring is here.

All right, enough about the wind. Let’s talk about the Easter Bunny. I thought it might be kind of fun to take a look at the history of the hippity hopping creature, so I did what anybody else might do, ran a search for it on the internet. One of the first things that popped up was a page from the Smithsonian. “Ah, this should be a great reliable source,” was where my thoughts went, and yes, it certainly was!

Now, honestly, I was expect-

Avenue Flashes

ing to find either a simple, folksy story about how this tradition started a couple of hundred years ago in some long forgotten European village or be disappointed to learn that the whole thing started as a promotion for some candy company back in the 1920’s. But, I knew I was in trouble with this idea when I got to a paragraph in the middle of the article that started with “Over a thousand years later, during the iron age…” Yeah, this was a little more complicated that I had anticipated. Let’s just say that if you want to really dive into everything from the Neolithic age, to the Greek Goddess Aphrodite to Julius Caesar to the debate of whether to eat rabbits or not during the Middle Ages in England to ward off witches in the spring, then yes, the Smithsonian website is the place you might want to go to become the neighborhood expert on the subject.

I’ll just pick up the story at the part where there are ac- counts that describe children hunting for Easter eggs hidden by the Easter Hare in Germany during the 1600s. Then it rambles on about the Hare being a symbol for spring and rebirth before it starts talking about eating the poor things again. And that was just one of the articles about them. The Smithsonian even goes into why some of the chocolate bunnies are hollow.

And forget about looking into everything about Easter eggs on that website. They have pages filled with hundreds of articles about that subject, including one about 10,000 plastic eggs washing up on a beach in 2017. Lots of information on that website, sheesh!

But, meanwhile here in Golden we can get back to the one little tradition that we have had for several years. It’s the annual Easter Egg Hunt, sponsored by the Kiwanis Club and the Golden Chamber of Commerce. This year it’s going to be held at 10 a.m. on April 8 in Parfet Park. It’s located at Washington Avenue and 10 th Street.

Now, that’s all the basic information, but trust me, you really need to know a little bit more about it than just the time and place. Otherwise, the rest of your Easter weekend is going to be a miserable one with really upset kids.

The first thing you need to know is that this is a really fun free event that attracts a lot of people, with loads of kids. Luckily, the organizers realize that this means different ages and they have things split up into age groups so the little ones don’t get trampled by the big ones. But, being very popular presents an issue that you should probably plan ahead for. You’re going to need to find a parking place and may need to walk a little ways to get to the park. So, plan on getting there plenty early because when they say 10 a.m., they mean sharp, and once it starts, it’s over in minutes. Being fashionably late is not an option here. So, Google a parking map for the area and know where you can find the town’s parking garages. You will thank me at 10:15 on Saturday morning.

And, if you do happen to see the Easter Bunny, say hello for me. But I wouldn’t mention the thing about eating them to ward off witches. Especially in front of the three-year-olds. That might also ruin the rest of the weekend.

Happy Easter, everyone!