It’s only January and I’ve already started sewing Easter ornaments and making them pose for photos. Obviously I’m a big Easter fan.

I always have been. When I was a kid, the Easter Bunny came every year, bringing me and my sisters and brother baskets brimming with candy and colored eggs. He also brought us each one small present–maybe a cute duck or bunny figurine for the girls and a Nerf football or some other little toy for Jacob, my brother.

The candy was artfully arranged in each basket and always included a coconut nest, a peanut butter egg, a Cadbury egg, Peeps, jellybeans, bubblegum eggs, malted milk eggs, SweeTart eggs, and a large, handsome chocolate bunny.

We’d spend some time admiring the beauty of our baskets, but pretty soon we’d dig in. I was an obsessive eater of candy and usually managed to polish off my entire basket by the end of the day. I ate steadily, methodically, using the bubblegum and SweeTarts as a palate cleanser between the numerous courses of chocolate.

Dad and Mom didn’t usually participate in the day with us, so we kids took it on ourselves to invent and observe our own Easter traditions. We’d hide eggs multiple times in very, very hard places. The hiding places were so difficult that many of the eggs were inevitably given up for lost–until the neighborhood raccoons found them days later. In the mornings after Easter, the lawn would be littered with bits of colored eggshells, remnants of the raccoons’ midnight feasts, and one time Mom even spotted a nice, chubby raccoon washing a purple Easter egg in broad daylight in our backyard goldfish pond.

Since Dad and Mom often spent Easter doing very un-Easter-y things like fighting while cleaning the garage, we kids would try to counter that by behaving in what we hoped was a reverent manner. My sister Kris and I would sit with our baskets and imagine the kind and gentle life of the Easter Bunny, or I (as the oldest) would endeavor to read the Bible to the other kids. I’m sure my attempts at providing religious instruction were quite funny because I was not at all knowledgeable about the Bible.

One of our rituals, a very important one, was to say at the end of the day, “This was the best Easter ever!” I would say it, and then Kris would immediately agree. She’d say, “Oh, yes, it was the best Easter ever!”