When Did You Know There Was No Easter Bunny?

By Elaine Viets

My husband Don, who's more savvy than I am, figured out the Easter bunny at age five or six. "I just knew it wasn't real," he told me.
I was a little slower. Actually, I was a lot slower. I should have figured it out years earlier. I mean, think about it: A giant male rabbit runs around filling all the Easter baskets in the world in one night? Did I know any man who did that much domestic work?
Most dads in my neighborhood couldn't organize a backyard barbecue. They poured equal amounts of beer into themselves and into their barbecue sauce, and then took all the credit for flipping a few burgers. It was the moms who made the potato salad and brownies, cooked the corn on the cob, bought the burgers, buns, beer, paper plates and napkins.
But like I said, I was slow to catch on. I still believed in the Easter bunny when I was nine years old. Since I was a tall child, who looked older than I really was, my mother was embarrassed by me prattling about the Easter bunny. She was afraid people would think I was simple. Like most kids, I'd given up candy for Lent, and all I could think about was the treats the Easter bunny was going to bring.
So what did Mom do?
One afternoon, about two weeks before Easter, I came home from school, opened the fridge, and found the whole family's Easter candy in the fridge: eight chocolate bunnies, boxes of fancy foil-wrapped eggs, bags of little milk chocolate eggs – the whole luscious, sweet-shiny horde – on a shelf where I could see it.
I was shattered.

Confronted with this body of evidence, I was forced to conclude that there was no Easter bunny. Some of the fun went out of the holiday, though the candy still tasted good.

Good Housekeeping magazine wrote an earnest article about this childhood milestone: "When Should I Tell My Children the Easter Bunny Isn't Real?"
The magazine suggested that when your kid starts catching on, a good way to gently explain this is to say, "The Easter Bunny is a lot like other things you know aren't real, but used to believe in — like the monster under the bed."
What? That is a dangerous thing to tell children.
Everyone knows the monster under the bed is real. But if you keep your arms and legs from hanging over the side of the bed, he can't get you.
So when did you know there was no Easter bunny?

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St. Louis chocolate, toasted ravioli, and other city treats star in my seventh Josie Marcus' mystery shopper mystery, Death on a Platter. Win the new e-book. Click Contests at www.elaineviets.com

Comments

[Alan P.]

The Easter Bunny never came to our house. Easter chocolate did arrive right after Passover, on sale.

For the girls the Easter Bunny was never a thing or with their classmates. I don't think any of their friends thought the bunny was real. Chocolate. Chocolate is real.

When Princess One was under five we had neighbors who had inflatable decorations for Christmas and Easter. She loved the big bunny in the yard and the motorized reindeer in the winter.

[Alan P.]

Now, my wife's family still watches for Eliuahu to drink some of his wine at Passover. He does need to hit several million sips between Sundown and midnight each year.

[Elaine Viets]

Chocolate is always real, Alan. I've been at seders with the glass of wine for Eliuahu. He must be a bit tipsy by the end of midnight.

[krisneri]

A kid in my kindergarten class told me when I was five that Santa Claus wasn't real, which my mother confirmed. When Easter rolled around, I just figured if Santa was a sham, the Big Bunny must have been, too. The only good thing I can say about learning these truths so young was that then I could dictate what I preferred to find in my Easter basket.

[Elaine Viets]

LOL -- and what a rotten kid, to end your Santa fun.

[Deb Romano]

There’s no Easter Bunny???

[Elaine Viets]

I'm not saying.

[Cath]

Sometime in the earlier years of elementary school. My mom didn't know the custom. After her friends realized this, they showed how an Easter basket was made after I go to bed. I never actually saw a person posing as one but saw the commercials. I actually had to be in a costume for work one year!

[Elaine Viets]

Those costumes are hot, Cath -- and not in a good way. You should have gotten hazard pay.