The Easter -Egg Hunt

When I was a child Easter meant candy in baskets and Sunday school. I remember the baskets quite well – full of Easter treats and hidden in a secret place. Upon waking my siblings and I would immediately go on the hunt. Each basket had a name and the “rules” were if you found someone else’s basket you were to leave it be, not say a word, and move on. When our children were small I wanted to have the same experience for them. We would buy 4 baskets, fill them with candy, and hide them around the house. After a few years the kids got too good at the hunt and the baskets would be found almost immediately – which is absolutely no fun for the adults. To extend the parental joy we decided to also include an Easter egg hunt.

I took the kids to the Easter egg hunts at church and then at the local outdoor mall. Neither was the experience I was looking for. The church eggs were hand- dyed colored eggs – real ones, hard-boiled. Pretty, but not all that desired by our troop of chocoholics. Matt was very young and spent the sermon under the pew. When it was finally time for the egg hunting to begin Matt was ready to go home. He had difficulty dealing with the noise and commotion of all the excited children and didn't understand what he was suppose to do. The outlet mall had an egg hunt across their vast lawn - the eggs were everywhere. Unfortunately a big brightly-costumed rabbit seem to stalk him. The hundreds of other children snapped up eggs right in front of him – leaving him with maybe 1 or 2 in his basket. Nope, the outlet mall was not the right experience either. After trying the public egg hunts and feeling disappointed we decided it was time to start having one of our own.

Our first family egg hunt was a small affair with only 40 eggs – plastic. Into each egg was placed a small candy treat. We placed the eggs in a bag and kept the bag out of sight until the night before the bug hunt. The night before was always exciting for Tom and me. We would venture outside with flashlights and a bag each of eggs and hide them around the yard. Next, we placed 4 chocolate bunnies on the kitchen table; 3 small and 1 large. The next morning the children were told that the one with the most eggs got the giant chocolate bunny. The kids tore out the door, scurrying this way and that, finding eggs almost immediately. I went with Matt. I took him by the hand and led him to the eggs I had hidden in the most camouflaged of spots. Sometimes they were there, sometimes they weren’t – we had 3 other children all gifted in candy-search techniques. Matt would slowly bend at the waist, pick up the egg and open it, dropping the candy into his basket. “Matt, we need to open the eggs later, keep searching.” I would have to keep pushing him to go faster in order to get more than just a handful of eggs. Matt didn’t win the giant bunny and this upset him tremendously. His tears just about killed us. This was meant to be fun and we had made a serious mistake in making the giant bunny prize a reward for the most eggs – Matt would need years to perfect a search method and increase his speed. We were definitely not doing this right, but we were determined to figure it out.

The next Easter we came up with the “Prize Egg”. All eggs were not created equal. One egg had the words “Prize” written in marker and the child to find that particular egg would get the big bunny. Each of the other kids felt bad about the prior year’s tears and Matt’s broken heart. We talked to them while Matt was busy in his room and asked them for their permission to let Matt find the prize. All agreed – wholeheartedly. The next morning we again released the candy-sleuths to a yard with even more eggs – 60 I think. Each of the children, Christopher, Jacob and Sarah, found the prize egg and would smile. Christopher kept pointing at it, “Matt over here!” Jacob saw it and moved it so the egg could be seen better, “Hey Matt, there might be eggs over here!” Sarah saw it –“Matt, did you search here yet?” Matt made his way toward all the smiling faces. He looked down and around for a bit as each child looked at each other and smiled. Finally Matt saw the egg. He picked it up and held it above his head like a trophy, his smile a mile wide. Matt won the prize bunny.

Matt did get faster year after year and each of the kids found the prize bunny at least once. Our annual egg hunt grew – from 40 eggs to 200 eggs over the years. We had hunts in the rain, watched eggs float by in a flood, hid some so well we didn’t find them for years (eewww!) and as the kids got older the scheduling of a hunt became a nightmare. Eventually the egg hunt faded away. We haven’t had a good hunt in years. As I write this I am making a mental note to put the annual egg hunt back on the schedule. So what if they are all in their 20’s. We have new members of the family that should experience the hunt – a real honest to goodness hunt – for colored eggs and candy. After all, does anyone really outgrow a treasure hunt or the taste of chocolate?

Christ said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven”. Our little children demonstrated why this is so on that long ago Easter morning in the willing gift of a chocolate bunny.