Christmas Blog Party: The Easter Bunny Edition

I like to think I’m a pretty smart girl.

When I put two and two together concerning Santa Claus, it actually happened on an Easter Sunday.

I was in like the fourth or fifth grade - I think.  It’s hard to remember exactly how old I was at the time, but I know it was somewhere around the age that you should find out the truth anyways.  However, I have a sister who is four years younger than me.  I know my parents worked extra hard to make sure that me finding out didn’t affect her in any way.  My parents would always tell us that Santa exists as long as you still believe in him.  (No one knew that my sister’s disenchantment would come when her fifth grade teacher assumed all fifth graders knew the truth about Santa, and she said something about it in class.  My sister went home from school in tears that day.)

I remember the excitement of venturing into the den to see what kind of goodies the Easter Bunny brought in our baskets.  It was never quite the same excitement that comes with Christmas morning, but I was always thrilled to find chocolate bunnies and new videos to watch and the fun play jewelry.

This particular year, I found chocolate peanut butter-filled bunnies and chicks.  They looked... oddly familiar.  I couldn’t quite place why I recognized this candy.  I thought about it during church.  I thought about it during the egg hunt at my aunt’s house.  Finally, while eating Easter dinner, I figured it out.  It was the same candy that we had just sold in my school’s spring fundraiser.

I remember asking my mom about this.  She told me that the Easter bunny probably just got it from the school fundraiser since he knew it was the kind of candy I liked. I wasn’t convinced.  Like I said, I’m a smart girl.  I just knew, right then and there, that there was no such thing as the Easter Bunny OR Santa Claus. But there was one small problem with this revelation.  While I easily accepted that mom and dad brought out our Easter baskets, I wasn’t as convinced that Santa didn’t really exist.

When I was in the first grade, I slept in a bedroom in the back of our house in a little twin bed.  My sister was only a year old at the time, and she slept in a crib in the same room.  I remember we had been in bed for quite a while that Christmas Eve.  She was sound asleep, but I of course was having the hardest time getting to sleep because I was so excited about Santa! As I tried to fall asleep, I all of a sudden heard something.  I sat up.  I listened.

“Jingle bells!” I whispered in excitement.

Sure enough, I could hear bells outside my window.  I tossed myself back in bed and pulled the covers up.  I squeezed my eyes shut and tried furiously to make myself fall right to sleep.  Santa was here!

I told my parents all about it the next day.  I went back to school in January and told my classmates.  I just knew that I had heard Santa stopping at our house.

So when I discovered the truth about the Easter Bunny a few years later, I couldn’t quite fathom how it could possibly be true that Santa didn’t exist.  I asked my parents if they went outside my window and jingled those bells, and they continued to tell me no.

I still get little warm fuzzies when I watch the Christmas movies like Miracle on 34th Street where everyone finds out at the end that Santa DOES exist.

My parents admitted once my sister and I were older that they were responsible for the bells, but in the end I think I sometimes deep down don’t believe that they did it.

Melanie blogs about running, volunteering, and her cat Tucker at Life is a Marathon. She has been friends with Danielle since 1997 and continues to give her sound advice and a few scrapbooking tips.