Sweet Easter Deception

This year our family’s exploration of the Paschal mystery began with a question from Phoebe, who is four-and-a-half years old. It was a springtime afternoon in Washington, D.C., the trees were blooming prettily, and I was in the process of retrieving her from our parish school a few hours early.

“When,” Phoebe said, as she began pulling on her seatbelt, “are the leopards coming?”

“What leopards?” I asked, taking the strap from her and clicking it into place.

“The magical ones.”

I got behind the wheel, slammed my door, flipped down the rear-view mirror, and smiled at her. “Magical leopards?”

“You know,” she said. “They come for Easter.”

“Gosh.” I started the car and pulled away. “Usually it’s a bunny that comes for Easter. I don’t know about the Easter leopards. What do they do?”

“They can turn the milk green, and the bread. Everywhere in the world. Emma told me.”

There was a pause and then a gleam of light.

“Do you mean leprechauns? That are supposed to come for St. Patrick’s Day?”

“Oh,” Phoebe considered. “Yes.”

“No such thing,” I told her firmly. “It’s an idea people had from Ireland in the olden days. But there are no Easter leprechauns, darling. There is--”

Here, hit by the absurdity of what I was about to say, I swiftly triangulated. Sprinkling around phrases such as “it is apparently the case” and “I’m given to understand” in domestic life can be as helpful as it is in politics. You can create a smooth and misleading impression without actually committing yourself to a known falsehood.

“There is apparently an Easter bunny," I said, "since children get jelly beans and chocolate at Easter, and the bunny is apparently the one who brings them (though I’ve never seen him), but there are no little men with red hair and beards carrying a shillelagh and turning things green.”

“What’s a shalala?“

“Shillelagh. It’s a kind of stick. But leprechauns don’t carry them, because they don’t exist. The leprechauns, I mean, don’t. Shillelaghs do.”

“Do what?” Phoebe asked, puzzled.

“Exist,” I replied, laughing. Yet I was also chagrined by this reminder of the responsibility one has as a parent to translate the manifold peculiarities of the world in such a manner as not to make chumps of one’s children. I hadn’t meant to, but I had just made Phoebe my chump.

Continued on page 2: Will she think Jesus is a con? »