Can You Find Jesus at the Easter Egg Hunt?

I'll be among the many who are boiling and dying eggs this weekend in celebration of the Easter holiday. Yes, I know, there weren't dyed eggs under the cross, but it is a family tradition. We dye eggs, go to church, celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and our eternal salvation, and scramble around the yard in search of eggs and chocolate.  It's not totally from the gospel, I know.  We do enjoy a little bit of the worldliness of the holiday.

Are we still looking for Jesus at the Easter egg hunt?

But, it's starting to get a little out of hand.  Easter is on the rise of becoming more and more commercialized, though I doubt that it will ever catch up with Christmas. But it's getting there with the Easter dresses and candy (I admit my taste for Peeps!) and all kinds of stuff for the Easter basket, including sports (basketball, darts) and character-related (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Disney Princess, SpongeBob) toys.  The Easter egg roll hoop-la is slowly starting to take-off as a thing to "celebrate" Easter (and I use that phrase very loosely.)

I've noticed more and more Easter egg rolls and hunts, hosted by organizations and companies and groups and municipalities that have nothing to do with Jesus dying on a cross and rising from the grave three days later.  Hunting and rolling eggs are thrown in as fun activity for spring festivals, neighborhood block parties, and a fun thing to do now that spring is finally here.  Hunts have become teaching activities (find the yellow eggs), shopping incentives (find the plastic egg with "money" in it to purchase toys at the booth), night festivities with glow in the dark eggs, and party games.  It's a new marker for the coming of spring, like Memorial Day for summer or Labor Day for fall.  I get it that the egg hunt is fun - kids love running around looking for goodies and prizes; who can argue with that? But I'd like to humbly suggest, that if one is not going to mention Jesus at all, then call it something else - spring scavenger hunt, for instance, or  chicken egg hunt.

It's one of those little things that kinda irk me and make me nervous: Jesus barely gets an invitation to the Easter celebrations.  I can see that this holiday, the most important Christian holiday, will become another over-commercialized event day that loses meaning, even, especially, to Christians. But we can have hope that Jesus will remain at the center of the celebrations. That somewhere, He will be invited to the festivities and we will find Him in the scramble and hunt for the prizes and chocolates.

Have a blessed Easter.

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