The perfect Easter basket...

As a child, I always dreamed of waking up to a beautiful Easter basket, filled with a pink bunny, delicate chocolate eggs and bunny peeking out of paper Easter grass. Some of my friends were "spoiled" (to me) enough to have been given a pretty new dress and shoes, and headed off to church in their Easter finery, with jelly beans still stuck in their teeth. Now, I know that is not what Easter is all about, but I still wanted that perfect Easter basket anyway... Sophie and her cousin Sarah, dressed in their Easter finery...

I grew up in a house with six children. There was not the money for such luxuries; and although my sweet mum always created a lovely Christmas for us, other holidays usually slipped by without a lot of fuss. Often, we would get one of those chocolate bunnies in the plastic bag (usually for $1.44) and, if we were in Zellers when the lady who wrote your name on the 88 cent eggs was there, we would cue in line to get our names "painted" on in a sickly-sweet, white icing. As a child, I was never a huge fan of chocolate, especially the "cheap" kind as my sister and I call it. We were indeed chocolate snobs, she a fan of rich, dark chocolate...me, solely a fan of Cadbury's milk chocolate. You see, our dear Auntie Jean and Uncle Jimmy had spoiled us for the good stuff by bringing us over chocolate from Ireland (our birthplace). They would bring large boxes of Cadbury Flake bars and dole them out equally between all of us children. For our mother, they would bring her beloved Fry's Cream bars (***see description below), which she would hide from our greedy fingers and enjoy while reading a good Catherine Cookson book late at night. Needless to say, my refined taste buds despised the cheap chocolate of my childhood Easter bunnies, and I eventually gave up and started requesting white chocolate bunnies or even yogourt as a teen (which was quite a luxury back then!).

Spring 1968...my mum and siblings with my beloved Aunt and Uncle...I am still just a twinkle in someone's eye as the saying goes...

One of my favourite Easter memories was the year we boiled up some eggs, dyed them, and rolled them down the small hill on our country property. I remember wishing that I actually liked eggs, because they looked so pretty and I longed to be able to eat one. I do not remember ever doing that before or after, so it sticks out in my mind as special Easter activity.

Decorating eggs...now a yearly tradition.

Fast forward to today, and I enjoy all the pretty traditions associated with Easter. I love putting together a beautiful basket for each child, but deplore the idea of making it into another holiday with the magnitude of Christmas. I remember being in a Walmart store when my children were small and spying a mum with a cart filled with large gifts that she was "putting on lay-away for Easter." I couldn't believe the elaborateness of the gifts and wished someone would relieve her of this misconception that children need to be over-indulged in this way. I like to give my children small seasonally appropriate gifts for Easter, more as a celebration of spring than anything else.

When my sons were small, I always included a new ball cap, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, and perhaps a new pail and shovel for the beach. For my daughter, I usually get her some new sandals or flip flops, a skipping rope, chalk, sunhat, and usually a cheap, but cuddly small bunny as she loves such things. My wistful inner child usually ends up buying her a pretty, new Easter dress to wear to church, despite the weather usually being too unseasonable for such wear...And of course, I buy Cadbury's chocolate eggs and bunnies for my children, as even they don't like the packaged cars and kittens made of the "cheap chocolate". Such snobs are we...!!!

***Fry's Cream is a chocolate bar made by Cadbury's. It consists of a fondant centre wrapped in dark chocolate, and is available in plain, peppermint and orange versions. Fry's Chocolate Cream is one of the oldest chocolate bars, launched in 1866.

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On a related note, I remember as a young girl, new to Canada, going on a car drive with my family and stopping for gas. My siblings and I were allowed to go into the store and pick out a treat. Knowing my love of pink, you can only imagine my thrill at spying a pink chocolate bar by the name of "the Pink Panther Bar". I will never forget its pink, creamy goodness with a sweet strawberry flavour and a perfect embossed pink panther that I discovered as I peeled back the wrapper. I remember carefully licking it, so as to preserve that pretty image for as long as I could. I have never tasted anything as good, and I doubt I ever will, as I imagine it would taste sickly sweet to my more adult taste buds, now. Aah...memories!!