Talking about infantilizing your kids: How about mothers who still make Easter baskets for their grown and even married children?
Even when Easter Basket Moms try to quit, they are often met with protests from their overgrown children.
“Last year was the first year I didn’t,” Marie Archung of Danvers said. “My daughter is married, and she came over for Easter dinner and was asking for her basket.”
And as children grow, so do their Easter baskets.
“They’re more apt to have favorites now, whereas when they are little, candy is candy,” said Maryanne McCarthy of Danvers, who has two children in their 20s.
“It’s interesting how kids don’t make a judgment on the price of things when they are young,” said Gail Rappoli, a music teacher at Smith School in Danvers who gives Easter baskets to her college-age daughter. Rappoli said her father was a single dad and would make a trail of jelly beans on Easter morning leading his five children to bowls of dyed eggs on the kitchen table.
“And we were thrilled,” she said.
Now, many Easter Basket Moms have replaced stuffed animals and candy with items more suitable for adults, like gift cards, CDs, DVDs and even jewelry.
“Last year, they were lucky — they got Red Sox tickets,” Galligan said. “That was the best one ever.”
It’s all part of the continuing effort to turn every holiday into a “shopping” holiday like Christmas.
Okay, it’s one thing to put out jelly beans or chocolate on Easter Sunday, but it’s another thing to make up special baskets— complete with expensive gifts—and even to have Easter egg hunts for your adult children and their spouses.
Besides, what does all this have to do with Easter?
What does it have to do with Easter?
TRADITION
My mother made an Easter basket for me well into adulthood. She made an Easter basket for an adult friend of our family who was a substitute father to me after my own died. In fact we made that Easter basket together many times. It was a basket of candy, nothing expensive, but it was fun making that basket, a sort of arts and crafts project.
It’s part of celebrating an important holy day. There must be some sort of material to mark a special day. Jesus knew the necessity of this. All of the sacraments have a material component. We humans need something we can experience with our senses.
I still make an Easter basket for my adult daughter, and have begun making one for her soon-to-be husband as well. He had never received an Easter basket until I made one for him. He was thrilled. The tradition will continue at least until they have children when the focus may or may not shift entirely to the kids.
In my husband’s family there has been until recent years an exchange of Easter candy. I always looked forward to one particular Aunt’s contribution because she shopped at the Faroh’s chocolate store. Faroh’s chocolate beats Godiva hands down. The amount of candy exchanged became excessive, and so we have discontinued it. But I do miss the Faroh’s
What would Easter be without colored eggs, Easter candy, lillies on the table, and a special Easter outfit. It wouldn’t be complete without these things.
Actually I don’t have a problem with it. My mother still does a number of very sweet things for me even though I’m a crusty 40 year old.
Let me point out I wasn’t saying that Easter baskets are not appropriate … for kids. For adults, I think it’s a bit much and part of the slippery slope of infantilization. Certainly making baskets full of expensive gifts goes too far and pushes Easter further along the path that Christmas has already gone down.
I know nobody’s saying that kids shouldn’t get Easter baskets, but here’s why they’re so important in my house: the little kids are very, very aware of Lent, because there are no sweets, no weekend movies, etc. The sudden explosion of sweets is their way of feasting after all that fasting. It makes it clear to their little minds that Easter’s a big deal.
On the other hand, there are two times in the year when having seven children strikes me as being as outrageous as everyone else seems to think it is: when I’m buying the candy to make all those baskets (we’re talking real money here!) and when I’m buying them shoes all at the same time. Utter chaos in the shoe aisle.
By the way, our older kids started a tradition of making Easter baskets for us parents, which is awfully nice.
I’m with the ladies on this one.
As a kid, I got an Easter Basket filled with penny candy. As an adult, I get (and give) an Easter basket filled with healthy things like fruit and nuts and some small, inexpensive gifts. I see it as a nice way to transition a cherished childhood memory into adulthood. I don’t feel infantalized at all. Moreover, it parallels Christmas. As a child, Christmas is celebrated with religious services, religious traditions, and the receipt of gifts. But Christmas doesn’t change in adulthood, except that you give gifts as well as receive them.
It’s the same for Easter in my family, and it seems that others celebrate similarly.
Well, In my family we don’t do Easter baskets. Sorry, I’ve always seen them as pagan and don’t see the connection to the holiday. I’m even more convinced after going shopping and seeing hordes of people scarfing up packages of candy, bunnies and such that it sets the wrong tone. Same sort of scrabbling that goes on at Christmas that is just another big materialistic shopping holiday. We either go to Easter Vigil or morning Mass and then have a big family dinner (which I prepare with my kids) featuring lamb on Sunday. This keeps the focus exactly where it should be and keeps the kids (and me for that matter) from filling up on sweets.
IMHO I think a family dinner is a better way to celebrate the holiday rather than concentrating on candy, eggs, and bunnies.
I’m in Dom’s camp to a certain extent. I don’t want to make Easter into the “pastel Christmas”. OTOH, I do make a basket for my husband with some candy in it.
If my girls were home they’d get a chocolate bunny or something. I sent them a box with Passover goodies and palm crosses from last Sunday for their “Easter basket” this year……….you think they’re confused?
We have never made gifts part of the celebration.
What would Easter be without colored eggs, Easter candy, lillies on the table, and a special Easter outfit.
A celebration of Christ’s Resurrection.
Hey, I’m not judging family traditions and if grown-ups want the colored eggs and the baskets and such, that’s fine.
But I’m not doing any of that stuff—it never occured to me to, being childless—and it isn’t taking anything away from this awe-filled day.
Happy Easter, everyone!
Funny that you should bring up this topic Dom
I usually do a very small Easter Basket for my twin sons now that they are teenagers, just a solid chocolate bunny and some jelly beans. Now that they are 18, I wondered about how I should approach this year.
I decided again on a small basket as above since next year they will be away at college…..and I am a single mom!
I agree with you on the excesiveness of Easter gifts??!! That’s crazy and it has nothing to do with Easter.
While my mother doesn’t provide Easter baskets for her grown children, we do have baskets for all members of the family. I make one for my husband, he does one for me. We incorporate dying eggs (perfect symbol for Resurrection) and egg hunts (finding the Alleluia egg) and the adults and the children are part of this all. It’s all part of the Easter joy. We’ve fasted and mortified ourselves through Lent and now it’s time to rejoice, indulge a little, and spend time with family.
Although tomorrow’s temperatures might require an indoor hunt. Brrrr….
We usually make up a big Easter basket full of candy for the local Vets nursing home (only about 25 guys in this one). Those guys love it! I don’t get an Easter basket and I don’t give one to adults in my family but the kids do get them for the reason Abigail cited – after the 40 days Lenten fast, it is a great way to celebrate the end of the fast. I do suspect that for a lot of people it is ‘just another’ holiday. The stores are crazy this week.
I hope that we never lose our child-like (so very different from childish or infantile) joy at celebrating this great feast. Easter baskets have always been part of our celebration, and I hope they always will be, even though our children will soon graduate from college.
Back in our homeschooling days, we used to make up a dozen or so Easter baskets to give away. Sometimes the baskets went to group homes, other years to shelters, but most often they went to elderly folks who had no family in the area and who depended on generous people in the parish to drive them to and from Mass, take them to doctor appts., etc. I doubt that anyone ever appreciated or enjoyed them more.
My father, God rest his soul, enjoyed his Easter treats. He was brought up with a peculiar down east attitude that anything pleasurable must be sinful, but even he felt no guilt at devouring a rich chocolate cream egg on Easter. He’d been quite strict in his observance of Lent and it was time to celebrate the Good News with all of the appropriate feasting and fun. I made certain that his final Easter was celebrated as well. Very few things broke through the disease that fogged his mind and stole his ability to converse; one was an ability to respond to the Holy Eucharist (the priest at the nursing home was certain of that) and the other was the simple enjoyment of a special treat. I’m glad that he wasn’t denied his last chocolate egg.
The comments about Easter baskets, bunnies, etc. being “pagan” are all too common where we live. They are part of the general condemnation of all things Catholic as well. Many folks won’t even say “Easter” but insist on “Resurrection Day.” They are often the same ones who celebrate Reformation Day in the fall and insist that any notice paid to Halloween will cause their children to become either pagan or papist, and they’re not sure which would be worse. Saints preserve us from becoming like these dour souls.
Wait…if you don’t go in for the easter bunny, candy, and baskets, then someone is not a Catholic? Odd, I don’t remember the Easter bunny and candy being part of the Catechism. I happen to be a devout, and orthodox Roman Catholic, and, my family and I are hardly “dour.”
If you want to have the candy and such…go for it. Just keep in mind not everyone who isn’t in to the whole candy and bunny scene may not be Protestant nor Dour…some of us have just decided to drop out of the whole secular Easter business.
Have a pleasant and happy Easter. God’s love and peace to you!
I agree that Easter baskets are for kids—it does help to mark the holiday for them, which otherwise might be hard for them to understand.
And I don’t have a problem with a bit of Easter candy for adults. I have some for my husband and I today. But gifts and all, no.
In fact, I have a real problem with Christmas the way it currently is. I’m one of those people who really doesn’t like Christmas much because I get tired of the meaningless crush of swearing traffic and people in line for nothing that even remotely resembles a religious motive. I dread everything except mass every year. With Easter at least, the culture hasn’t totally caught onto the commercial aspects which is a relief, honestly.
And I don’t think we should call people “dour” if they don’t agree with our easter basket preferences. You want chocolate? By all means, eat chocolate then but leave other people alone about it. Please.
The Toy R Us Easter Sale makes me gag. We do color eggs and hunt for eggs… but again we’ve made a point to observe Lent.
My mom & dad have us all together two days a year, Thanksgiving and Easter (one of us kids hosts Christmas). Although they don’t do baskets for us on Easter, there is a large tray of candy, plus plastic eggs for the grandkids to hunt. There were 5 of us kids originally and now there are 23, spouses and children included. Any candy remaining at the end of the evening gets split between my Dad and my only unmarried brother.
Their generosity to us is an outpouring of their love. Nothing fancy, just jelly beans and other treats. No expensive gifts. Plus Mom doesn’t have to make dessert!
As I said in the post, I wasn’t criticizing the eating of candy, as such.
Aw, hunting for Easter eggs is fun. And sometimes it’s fun for the kids to turn the tables and HIDE eggs on the adults. And it’s great fun to surprise an elderly person or any unsuspecting adult by tucking a few eggs here and there. It brings smiles.
I don’t see anything wrong with family’s traditional get-together rituals. Easter baskets are a whole lot healthier than getting together to drink or gossip, which is what many of the adults did when I was a kid. If there is a problem, it is in the unexpected becoming a sense of obligation or entitlement.
And hunting for Red Sox tickets is a really cool idea, if you can afford it!! Who wouldn’t like to do that? No, none of these rituals have much to do with Easter, per se, but they all have to do with caring about one another and sharing a celebration!
FWIW—
our two year old granddaughter got a basket.
The Queen of the House put a tray of cansy and chocolates out for everybody else.
I guess i’d better explain—we live as an extended family, three generations of us together now. One Daughter has a 3 week old, (her daddy’s in basic training), one Daughter has a 2 year old, (her daddy and mommy are divorced). Since I’m the only guy here, chocolate is a big thing—not seen since ash wednesday—along with fruit pie and rich meals. But the baskets are for kids.
the Uber Toddler, by the way, was at the Easter Vigil, and at Easter Sunday Mass—she knows it’s about Christ, and was delighted by the gold vestments and music. She was also delighted when the vigil was over!
1. One definite area of agreement is the extension of Easter to include “presents”: it’s amazing how those “pre-packaged” Easter baskets get bigger every year.
2. I’ve always known adults to give each other baskets. When I was a kid, Mom & Dad each got their own basket. I’ve seen plenty of times when adults gave each other baskets.
3. In our own family, though, we’ve pretty much learned to aschew “baskets” as such anyway, due to the logistics and the resulting mess. This year, my wife just bought everybody a chocolate bunny and plastic eggs.
4. I think the last year I received a basket from my parents was 1998, when I was almost 21 (possibly for a year or two after that). My parents took the view that, since every holiday was potentially my last, and since I was so limited in which of life’s pleasures I could enjoy, maintaining those kinds of holiday traditions was important.
That particular year, we found out a fellow parishioner, whom we only knew as a passing acquaintance, had been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. So we took the basket that Mom had made for me and brought it to that lady in the hospital, giving her a very happy Easter morning.
I am always looking for an occasion to give especially to my family, it is called Love. It does not take away from the occasion it represents the gift that Christ gave to us. I don’t like it when people become holier than thou because they do not participate in giving especially to your own family.
Given that this post is eight years old now, I will still respond to your comment. The problem is that Love is not stuff. We have become a culture obsessed with stuff and we think that because we give stuff, we are giving love. But what happens when we can’t give stuff anymore? What lesson have we taught our children? Jesus didn’t give us stuff to show us He loves us. He gave us himself. He gave us actual love, his self-sacrifice.