When I was a kid we didn’t live within walking distance to any stores. I only got candy three times a year: Halloween, Christmas(and only candy canes) and Easter. My family was not religious and Easter was all about sugar. The story was that the Easter bunny came in the night and filled the baskets we had left on the sofa for him(her?). Even after I was old enough to know the truth, I had to stay quiet since my youngest sibling was eight years younger than I was.

Our haul on Easter was very specific. We got jelly beans, miniature jelly beans, foil wrapped chocolates in a container such as pictured above and one chocolate rabbit. Solid chocolate, not just a chocolate shell. If Peeps had been invented, we were unaware of them. The Easter bunny had carefully put exactly the same number of things in each basket. We knew this because we counted each jelly bean and chocolate.

We would swap jelly beans with one another. I craved the black ones, and fortunately none of my siblings liked them. I was able to trade with my despised green ones. Then we embarked on the opposite of an eating contest. That is, we raced to see who would resist eating the rabbit first. Then we argued about whether eating the ears counted if the rest of the bunny remained intact. With four of us, we were pretty well able to argue most of the day.

Today Easter is about the story of Christ with a very long Vigil Mass on Easter Eve, complete with “smells and bells” as non Catholics say. But in my childhood, it was all about the candy.