Wednesday, 25 March 2009

• It's About That Time for Easter Baskets!

  

  Here we are, with roughly 3 ½ weeks left until Easter.  Target has had their Easter displays up since before the end of Valentine's Day.  Stuffed rabbits, colorful plastic eggs,l ittle toys, plastic grass and candy galore are spread out, waiting to be purchased for Easter morning.  Then there are the pre-made Easter baskets, which, in my opinion, are way over priced and filled with tons of plastic junk (and even crappier candy!) 

  Last year was Jeremiah’s first Easter.  He was 3 ½ months old, and I still made him a little (candy free!) basket. As a first time parent I just could not resist starting all of those fun child-holiday traditions.  His first Easter basket contained 3 DVDs- Dumbo, Charlotte’s Web (the classic cartoon version) and the new Curious George DVD;  The Tale of Peter Rabbit, and a stuffed bunny.  The four other Easter baskets he received throughout the day from his doting grandparents and aunties contained everything from summer-y clothing to grow into, bottles, pacifiers, bubbles and sand toys. 

  Jeremiah will be 16 months this year for Easter and I have just finished his Easter basket shopping.  His basket will contain the Pinnochio DVD (which, I admit, is mostly for me- it was a favorite of mine as a child!), a Little Tikes beach ball that hooks up to your sprinkler, a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse pop up book, a stuffed bunny, and, his all-time favorite snack, Goldfish! 

  When I was growing up, we always had a nice, homemade Easter basket with contents fairly equivalent to the Easter basket that I made for my son- fun things (plus lots of candy!), yet nothing overly expensive.  Looking back, I believe my mom spent around $30-40 per basket for my brother and myself, which is around what I spent on Jeremiah.  I have heard of parents spending way less and WAY more. 

  I am a member of CafeMom, an internet mommy forum much like Mommaroo, and one day Easter baskets were a hot topic of discussion- and several parents declared that they spend roughly 2-3 HUNDRED dollars per kid (or more- the most I saw was $700 per kid for ONE basket).  Apparently the Easter bunny brings gift wrapped gaming systems to their house, video games galore, cell phones and laptops.  In my opinion this is a bit extreme.  I was raised where the two big “gift”days are your birthday and Christmas- but even then I NEVER received $700 worth of gifts from my parents at one shot. Some parents even spent roughly that amount for Valentine's Day!  Goodness. No wonder children are becoming more and more materialistic nowadays. The focus of the reason for the actual holidays are taken away and replaced with the “gimme gimme” attitude of what they can milk from their mommies and daddies (or the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and… Cupid?)

  If you celebrate Easter, do you buy your children Easter baskets, make one up yourself, or skip Easter baskets all together?  What kinds of things go in the baskets?  How much do you roughly spend per basket?

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