a little cameo

When I left Australia at the very beginning of February, there were already Easter eggs for sale in the supermarket.

Three months later, Easter has arrived and I almost missed it. I expected Americans (who love a celebration and love to eat junk food and are typically more religious than Australians) to really get behind Easter. I expected to see a mad assortment of eggs, bunnies and Easter paraphernalia. I expected to be absolutely bombarded with Easter consumerism. I didn’t and I wasn’t.

At home I would be able to find a whole aisle at a supermarket or department store dedicated to Easter. That and dozens of hot cross buns tempting me. Here, it was a struggle to find anything much other than tiny little eggs or the stuff required to make an Easter basket. In one place I saw Lindt bunnies for sale, but that was the largest chocolate Easter bunny I could find.

Only small sections of aisles or a table at my local supermarket offered up any kind of Easter merchandise. While it was kind of nice to avoid all the Easter consumerism fanfare and the temptation to buy chocolate for anyone and everyone that I possibly know and take hot cross buns to work to feed my colleagues, it also didn’t feel the same. It didn’t feel particularly celebratory, like “here’s some time off for you to spend with your family and friends and get out and about in your country”. I guess the fact that Easter Monday is not a public holiday here changes things a bit.

BUT the Easter Bunny did find his way to my place to leave some eggs, including some Reese’s peanut butter filled chocolate eggs, and he left the chocolate in the shape of a cross on the shelf at Rite-Aid.