Grand Thoughts: Parents and grandparents perpetuate stories of the season

I lie to my granddaughters. I tell them there is a Santa Claus and an Easter Bunny.

It doesn't bother me one bit to fib about Santa. I sort of believe in him, too. At least he looks like a human and, in all the movies about him, he is human.

But the Easter Bunny -- a tall, furry rabbit that wears human clothing and sits in a chair at the mall? Even if we lying adults tell our innocent young children about this gigantic rabbit, how is it possible they believe us?

I have a problem with the Easter Bunny. Perhaps it's because my parents weren't in on the fun. They never told me there was an Easter Bunny. I'm sure it's because I was so incredibly intelligent as a baby they knew I wouldn't believe it.

But here I am, telling my granddaughters that the Easter Bunny is going to hide their Easter eggs and will leave them a basket filled with treats on Easter Eve. We draw pictures of the Easter Bunny; we sing songs about the Easter Bunny; we dye dozens of eggs for him to hide, and their mother and I will take the children to the mall to have their photo taken with him (or is he a she?).

After my four children grew up, I asked my oldest daughter, Kacee, the mother of my granddaughters, if she truly believed in the Easter Bunny when she was a child. She said she did.

I asked her: "You believed a gigantic rabbit delivered baskets to every household in the world, as well as hiding all the eggs, in just one night?"

Yes, she said. "I believed in the Easter Bunny because you believed," she said.

OK, I accept that.

"But how do you think the rabbit got around to all those houses -- hopped?" I asked her.

We all know that Santa was mobile because of his sleigh and reindeer. But we don't know how the rabbit got around, do we?

"I thought he rode around in a Volkswagen Beetle," she told me. "I guess because it looked like a big egg."

Makes sense.

So here I am, several decades later, lying to my granddaughters about a gigantic rabbit who, I tell them, rides around in a Volkswagen Beetle delivering Easter eggs.

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