No Easter baskets for you this year

 After 27 years of being a parent, I made a big decision this year: I’m not giving my two grown daughters Easter baskets.

I’ve threatened this before, with the usual argument they’re too old to still be getting chocolate bunnies and assorted sugar-laden goodies. A couple of times I came close to ending the Easter basket tradition, but succumbed and started giving them more practical items — new socks, cooking utensils and the like.

Here’s how the conversation went with my older, somewhat melodramatic daughter:

“I’m not doing Easter baskets this year,” I said a few weeks ago on the phone, putting her on notice.

“Yeah, right. You always do the baskets.”

“No, I mean it. I’m not buying anything.”

After a long pause, I hear: “10:52 a.m., March 14, 2012. The day my childhood officially is over.”

She was joking, of course, though I suspect she still believes I’ll at least offer up a chocolate bunny.

My younger, more practical and level-headed daughter had this to say: “Mom, it’s about time you gave that up. We don’t need any of that stuff.”

The problem with cutting out the time-honored basket tradition is that my sister-in-law from Bonners Ferry, Idaho, whose family we have spent Easter with for at least 20 years, still gives her two children — now in their early 30s — lavish baskets filled with all kinds of really cool gadgets, games, etc.

It’s been a kind of “keeping up with the Joneses” thing for me, even though it goes against my conservative upbringing. As I recall, my mother may have given us a sprinkling of jelly beans in a basket for a couple of years when I was a preschooler.

That was it.

I can honestly say I never ate a chocolate bunny during my childhood, harsh as that sounds now. We didn’t care; we didn’t know what we were missing.

Mom did make sure she bought the requisite Paas egg dye so we could color eggs.

Over the years we’ve alternated spending Easter at our home or at my husband’s sister’s home in Bonners Ferry. We’ve attended sunrise church services there, and the weather in Idaho is usually warmer, so outdoor egg hunts became another tradition.

For years my brother-in-law would do such a good job of hiding the kids’ Easter baskets that they’d be completely stumped.

In recent years Easter has become one of the only holidays when our oldest daughter can come home (our youngest daughter still lives in the Flathead) so we’ve hosted the celebration at our home.

This year we’ve taken the festivities a step further by planning a Ukrainian Easter egg decorating party for a dozen or more friends the day before Easter.

The pink-and-yellow plastic Easter buckets my kids have had since they were preschoolers have been tucked away in a closet, where they’ll remain for posterity, empty as Jesus’ tomb on Easter morning. That brings us to the real meaning of the holiday:

He is risen. He is risen indeed. Have a blessed Easter.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.