For those who celebrate such things, today is, on the Gregorian calendar, Easter Sunday.
The Halloween community doesn’t seem to have a specific name for this holiday, as it does for “Creepmas”, or “Valloween”, but I have a tendency to refer to it as “Creepster”.
I was thinking about it earlier today, though, and I realized…there are actually quite a few things about Easter that qualify it as “creepy”.
For one thing, I suppose I’ll get the semi-controversial stuff out of the way first. I’m really not religious, and never really have been. My mother is, to an extent. It doesn’t consume her but she finds it a comfort, and so I made traditional Christian sacraments like communion, confession, etc., and attended CCD classes until I was in middle school. It was interesting to me as I’ve always enjoyed learning, but many parts of the stories actually scared me. I’ve never read the Bible cover to cover or anything like that, but just of what I know of the religion I was taught as a child, Easter was definitely one of the scariest stories I was ever told! I can’t even begin to explain how images of a man hanging on a cross, with nails through his hands and feet, haunted me as a child. I know there are people who get offended by the “Zombie Jesus Day” jokes that people make, but I can see where it came from. From a child’s perspective especially, the Christian story of Easter definitely sounds like something out of a horror movie. As much of a scaredy-cat as I was as a child, I don’t think anything that was intentionally scary ever got to me quite as much as this stuff!
But, from a more aesthetic perspective, can we just take a moment to talk about Easter bunnies?! I noticed probably in my teens that the bunnies present for mall pictures and other kids’ events were often quite creepy looking. Current ones have gotten a little cuter and friendlier, but many of the older bunnies were downright terrifiying! I, unfortunately, am no longer in possession of the pictures of myself with the Easter bunny, but I distinctly remember my bunny being of that weird brownish-cat-puke color variety, with half-dead looking eyes. I also recall that he was very worn looking, almost as if he was some child’s favorite stuffed animal come to life, but the kind of stuffed animal that goes everywhere with the kid and has hard, crusty fur from being slept with, sucked on, probably dropped in the toilet a few times…you get my drift. I always wonder if this was, for some weird reason, intentional, or if the costumes just desperately needed an upgrade that they never got.
With that said, I then started to wonder about what, exactly, my childhood image of the Easter Bunny even was. Of all the mythical holiday creatures, the Easter Bunny is definitely the strangest, and, once I realized that they were, in fact, mythical, certainly the one I laughed at myself the most for ever believing in. I mean, I can still, in adulthood, picture a man like Santa Claus with magical powers, or even the existence of fairies (though why they would need to collect teeth is beyond me), and of course, in my mind, there will always be a Great Pumpkin, but I truly can’t picture a believable Easter Bunny in my mind and I don’t know what I ever saw this creature as, as a child. Did I see him as the bunnies at the mall, that were so obviously fake in their ratty old costumes? How could I have believed that something actually looked like that, naturally? Or did I just picture him as a giant, actual rabbit? (On a sidenote, one year in my childhood, on Easter, someone on some television network must’ve had a sense of humor because the aired Night Of The Lepus, which led to me having a few nightmares of giant killer bunnies.) Any way you try to picture the Easter Bunny, it’s definitely kind of creepy. Either a mutated rabbit, or a walking fur suit. Neither option sounds especially cute. And there’s no picture I can come up with in my head that doesn’t look fake or cartoony! It’s probably also worth noting that they’re still putting creepy bunny faces on cakes sold in stores for Easter. Some of them intrigue me because they look like vintage Halloween masks.
I do wonder, though, if I was obsessed with Easter egg hunting as a child because it reminded me a bit of trick-or-treating.
Does everything have to be about Halloween? Why yes, it does.
Anyway, just my two cents on some random thoughts I had about today’s holiday.
Stay spooky, my friends. And don’t let the Easter Bunny bite!
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