WARNING: This email may contain material that is too shocking for children under certain ages. Parental supervision is recommended. That’s right folks, this email has a “must be this tall to ride” sign.
You see, we’ve just recently finished up with the Easter holiday, which I celebrated by freezing at 15,500 feet in the Peruvian Andes and therefore successfully avoided what could have been a terrible cultural shock – there is no Easter bunny in Peru. Not a single sign of him anywhere. I’ll wait a moment for the significance of this to sink in… No Easter bunny means no egg hunts, which means parents have no method of bribing their children to wear all the cute Easter clothes. It also means that all of us adults have no excuse for buying completely unnecessary amounts of candy, which we will inevitably end up eating ourselves, thus ensuring that dentist practices will remain open for at least another year.
After a little contemplation, I’ve come up with a few different reasons for the lack of dyed eggs in Peru. The first of which is DISTANCE. Unlike Santa Claus and his speedy reindeer, the Easter bunny has nothing but his own for paws for transportation, making any story about him traveling the world in one day very improbable. Anyone who has ever seen a rabbit hop along would never buy a story involving a rabbit traveling the world in one day, no matter how young they are. As it is, there must be an underground network of bunnies working together to accomplish such a feat, and that is where you run into another snag in Peru – the only rabbits around are those that are being raised by families for food. You’re not going to find a lot of wild rabbits running around the countryside.
Another problem doesn’t involve rabbits, but the chickens here and their egg-laying habits. The eggs here are not clean and white like the ones in the US that are practically begging to be painted bright colors. The eggs here are various shades of tan, which isn’t exactly the ideal color to start off the dying process. They are also a lot smaller, which would make them a little more difficult to find during an egg hunt and trust me, a bunch of lost eggs hanging out in the desert sun would not make for a pleasant living environment. Maybe they did try the whole Easter egg hunt here, and after a few such catastrophes decided that it wasn’t worth it.
And lastly, I blame the candy companies for the lack of Easter bunny enthusiasm. If you think about it, Americans celebrate three holidays every year that encourage us to overindulge our sugar cravings – Easter, Halloween, and Christmas. Seeing as how it is the candy companies that rake in the majority of the profits during these times, I’m guessing that the marketing they do during those holidays is tremendous. Peruvian candy companies, on the other hand, haven’t quite caught on to the whole “marketing” idea. Maybe it is the difference in disposable income, but very rarely have I seen adults here buying candy. So rarely, in fact, that I can’t actually remember it ever happening and I am just assuming that it has to happen somewhere. But basically, this is not a candy-consuming society, and therefore holiday traditions in which candy plays a vital role have not developed. I don’t blame the people for this, because everyone loves candy, right? So it must be the fault of the candy producers, who are failing to convince their audience that they not only like candy, but cannot imagine going without it. Then, and only then, will the Easter bunny make his way down to the Southern Americans.
