Why do we like Easter?

I have some favorite holidays, others I'd just as soon skip.  Easter is always a cheery time, regardless of the weather, the non-advancing of spring, etc.  Why?  I suppose it harkens back to my childhood, when we went to church and were very involved in our church's everything.  Easter egg hunts, Sunday school (yes, I taught Sunday school--I don't remember just exactly WHAT I taught the little darlings...), Youth Group, Saturday classes. OMG we did it all.  Anyway, Easter was a great time because of the spirit of the day.  We were all happy, we sang cheerful hymns (oh yeah, I was in the choir, too)(even though I can't sing), we left church feeling cleansed and optimistic.  So maybe that's why I like Easter.  Aside from the church part, we always had really nice Easter egg hunts at home.  My father could be playful (though that may be hard to believe) and liked hiding jelly beans around the house.  Along the top of the doorjams, in the dial of the rotary phone, probably even in clean ashtrays (ashtrays were a big part of my childhood--every Saturday we cleaned them)(though, given the amount of smoking my parents did it must have been done more often than that).  Each of us had a basket filled with special treats--and we had to divide the candy we found around the house so that each got an equal amount.  Anyway, it was fun and we enjoyed it.

What do I do for Easter now?  I visit my mother, in Rhode Island, where it's always warmer than it is at my house, and where there's usually BARE GROUND for me to walk on in bare feet.  We dye eggs and have Easter baskets at the breakfast table on Easter morning.  We have a lot of food--our standard special breakfast of lox & bagels (Mark works at a bagelry), sometimes (if Jenica's there) with bacon too.  We sit in the sun (there always seems to be SOME sun during my visit).  And then we go to the pansy place to pick out our pansies.  Lots and lots of beautiful colors, always a hard decision to make: what color?  Mix the colors or be monochromatic?  Violas or pansies?  But, like Easter itself, it's a happy time.  I always have a pot of pansies on my deck railing.  My aunt always had a dish of pansies next to her door, which is probably where I got the idea.  Anyway, I usually stick to just one color, which is why it's so hard for me to make a decision when buying them.  I like the effect of a mass of one color.

I usually buy Pat some yellow pansies as well--she likes yellow flowers from me because she says I'm her sunshine.  Awwww.

On another note, Sunshine was the name of a horse that lived in Rockford & was in every parade.  Sunshine lived in a residential neighborhood, on a large wooded lot.  I don't know who owned the horse, but all the kids knew Sunshine.  Again, a happy memory (oh my mother would be so proud--she frets that we don't have any happy memories of our childhoods).