When did Easter turn into Christmas?

So I was at the store last night putting together the essentials of my kids Easter baskets and I started getting really annoyed as I started feeling guilty because I was trying to keep it to a minimum and not buy every trinket in the Easter display.

Then it hit me....Is Easter the new Christmas?

Why is it nearly mandatory that you have to put together Easter baskets? I mean I know my Mom made one for me every year. Even when I went off to college, she still had one for me. Now maybe this isn't typical, but my mom is just nutty like that.

So naturally when I had kids of my own I looked foreword to this holiday to pass on the crazy.

It was fun the first couple of years, but when we discovered allergies to chocolate and food coloring in my oldest, it put a whole new spin on the candy situation. Needless to say the "Easter Sunday church service meltdown" was always unavoidable.

So we started doing trinkets in the basket instead of candy. Mostly out of guilt because everybody else got candy and they didn't.

But then I heard a radio ad where they were pushing the idea of "making this Easter extra special by giving your kids video games and Barbie dolls in their baskets." .......????

I know this is just another marketing ploy to make you feel guilty for not giving your kids the moon when they ask for it. But C'mon!! It sort of falls under the idea of "You have to make your mother feel loved by buying her diamonds for mother's day" campaign. You know these commercials that they run a couple weeks before Mother's day where they have Dads scrambling to jewelry stores coughing up ridiculous amounts of money to buy their wives (not their mothers) diamond pendants to let them know what great mothers they are. Because nothing says "I love you" quite like a pile of debt. Personally I would be furious with my husband if he bought me jewelry. Mainly because we (along with most families) can't afford that sort of luxury. You couldn't wear it without thinking ..."gee this is really pretty....I wonder how long it will take to pay it off."

Plus, if you get your kids "gifts" in their Easter baskets this year, what can you do to top it next year, and the next. It just seems like a slippery slope. It's just a can of worms I don't want to open.

So with that, I am giving each of my kids a basket full of strawberries and they each get a coloring book. Thats it. We are going to focus on the death and resurrection of Christ and not what kind of loot the Easter bunny could produce. If that makes me a bad mom, well then so be it.

I'm sure my kids college fund will inevitably turn into their therapy fund anyways. So this really is just another drop in the bucket :)