Cup O’ Joe: Where is Peter Cotton Tail?

For many, Easter Sunday is a time of reflection and celebration as churchgoers observe the resurrection of Jesus. It is also a holiday that has become more secular over the years, with egg hunts and the Easter Bunny.
    As a child, Easter Sunday was on par with Halloween in my house in terms of generating pure excitement. After all, what child doesn’t like the idea of waking up to find a chocolate bunny at the foot of their bed?
My parents made Easter somewhat of an event and it’s something that I have tried to carry on with my children. You see, in my home, the Easter Bunny didn’t hide eggs. Instead, I arose to find my basket waiting for me filled with lots of new springtime toys, such as kites, bubbles and miniature wooden airplanes that you put together.
After quickly assessing the goods, the hunt was then on for candy. Jelly beans, miniature candy bars and other goodies were scattered throughout my parents’ house, some in plain sight and others in more sophisticated hiding spots.
It was always a competition between my brother and I (of course) to see who could find the most candy and we would race down the stairs like a thundering pack of elephants, usually just around sunrise. I’m sure my parents were in bed wondering why we made such a commotion so early in the morning.
Once we were finally sure that we had secured all of the loot the house had to offer, it was then time to count the candy to see who had won.
After church, we would return home and start the process all over again, taking turns hiding candy and letting the other go find it. It made for great fun throughout the day.
One particular Easter morning, I remember waking before the sun rose to see a shadowy figure in the room. Thinking it was the Easter Bunny, I quickly pretended to be asleep because I didn’t want to jeopardize my candy windfall. Every few seconds I would poke my head up, and the figure was still there.
Once the sun came up, I became a bit suspicious and jumped out of bed to find a large inflatable bunny at the foot of my bed. I have to admit, that was pretty brilliant as it kept me in bed a lot longer than I normally would have been, which allowed my parents to sleep in a bit longer.
There was another Easter when my father showed me the “bunny tracks” in the snow outside our home leading from our house to the next. That was pretty creative too.
Knowing that Easter marked the last “candy” holiday until Halloween, I always tried to make the goodies last as long as possible. That plan usually backfired, though, as the cute chocolate bunny would eventually turn into a speckled, stale-tasting pile of sugar that ended up in the trash, usually around May or June. Every so often, I would hit the jackpot and find a piece of candy a couple of weeks after Easter that had been so well hidden, it was never found.
I vaguely recall Easter egg hunts held here in Houlton many years ago. An egg hunt, complete with someone dressed up as the Easter Bunny, was held on the lawn of Ricker College and was sponsored by Tau Episilon Phi, a fraternity on the campus before it closed. My older brother was featured in a photograph of this newspaper as a 5-year-old winning one of the grand prize packages back in 1973. I was only 2-years-old at the time, but I’m pretty sure I was jealous.
Last year, in our first spring back home, I was surprised to see there were no egg hunts advertised in Houlton. The closest we could find was an event at the Bethel Pentecostal Church in Oakfield. There, more than 400 children gathered for the event, which featured a brief Easter message (after all, it’s not just a holiday about candy and bunnies), and then a hunt for more than 10,000 eggs scattered across their property. The church does a fabulous job with their event and I highly recommend taking the drive to Oakfield to participate.
Joseph Cyr is a staff writer for The Houlton Pioneer Times. He can be reached at pioneertimes@nepublish.com or 532-2281.