Hi, it’s me, the Easter Bunny, A.K.A. the least popular character to break into your home and leave stuff in the name of celebration. Let me lay it out for you. Every year, I hear Santa bragging about the plate of cookies and glass of milk he gets at every house he visits. Well, I’ve not only been hiding eggs, I’ve been hiding my feelings. I am fed up and I am asking: Where the hell is my plate of treats?
I cannot catch a break. Yeah, Santa and I both have to slum it at the local shopping mall, posing for photos with snot-nosed toddlers who sit on us with damp bottoms and beg for toys. That’s the worst of it for Santa, but it's downhill from there for me.
Oh, Santa’s a hero, bringer of bikes and puppies and Nintendo Switches, whereas I can only afford to give kids a tube of bubbles from the Target Dollar Spot and a single peanut butter egg. I can’t compete. Plus, you know he’s not stuck picking plastic grass out of his jolly old butthole until the Summer Solstice like I am. Have some sympathy and leave me some cookies too, dammit!
Let me remind you what Santa’s evening looks like: his reindeer drive him around, then he puts gifts in pre-hung socks and under the tree in a designated area. There’s no challenge; no creativity is required. Yet, he still gets a plate of treats and a refreshing glass of cow juice for doing the bare minimum.
Now let me tell you what my night entails. After arranging my sub-par trinkets in wicker baskets that un-weave themselves if you look at them too hard, I have to pop 20-30 eggs out of my cloaca—yes, I’m the only bunny rabbit in the universe with a cloaca—then hide them around someone’s house.
This has always been a puzzle—we can’t all just stuff crap in a stocking like you-know-who—but now that minimalism is in style again? You try finding clever hiding spots for two dozen neon pink eggs in a living room with white walls, white tile floors, and a single white futon with no throw pillows.
And what do I get for my efforts? The disappointed eyes of children who accidentally dump out their entire tube of bubble liquid upon opening it, followed by a heaping plate of nothing.
“But Easter Bunny,” you say, “I’ve made a cake in your likeness! We don’t do that for Santa!”
Tough shit, doesn’t count! I don’t get to eat any of that cake, and even if I did, nibbling on a sugary effigy of myself is too creepy for it to be a reward. It’s milk and cookies or nothing for the E.B.
Also, Santa may not get a cake in his image, but you know what he does get? A damned movie empire. You don’t see me getting portrayed by Kurt Russell and Paul Giamatti.
My holiday gets a lowkey misogynistic Judy Garland flick from the '40s and the Veggie Tales Easter Carol, which is so bad that the one time I saw it, I wanted to pluck off my little cotton tail and stuff half of it in each ear to drown it out. I also don’t make so much as a cameo in either of these films.
Read my bunny lips: no anthropomorphic Christian vegetables, no Fred Astaire. Just cookies. And also milk. Please.
I wasn’t going to mention this, but screw it, it’s relevant. I guess Santa and I have one more thing in common. We have nothing much, if anything, to do with Jesus Christ, even though we’re both symbols celebrating major events in His life.
But that cookie-popping, milk-guzzling jerk gets to celebrate JC’s birth. I get the shit end of the stick being the hype mammal for His zombification. And, on top of that, I have to show up for the pagans as a symbol of fecundity. I’m basically a walking, talking virgin/whore complex with long silky ears and cute little whiskers. You try making that balancing act work while suffering from low blood sugar caused by a lack of cookies.
Look, they don’t even have to be good cookies. A plate of stale Lorna Doones and a glass of the oat milk you forgot you purchased would be fine. Just something—anything—to get me through my hellish night of Easter Eve is all I’m asking for here. Please let me feel seen and appreciated for all of my hard, egg-related work.
I’ll even sweeten the deal and throw in an extra tube of bubbles if that’s what it takes. But you know what? Shaft me again this Easter and next year you can kiss my bunny soft cloaca.