Easter

A six foot tall white rabbit wearing a black and white polkadot vest or a turquoise chiffon skit stands on the sidewalks and street corners of the Country Club Plaza, a Kansas City landmark.  There are nine of these rabbits holding court in the shopping center that gave rise to the idea of shopping centers.  Most years, unlike the current one, early spring in Kansas City is a time of warm days, cool nights, gentle breezes, abundant sunshine with flowers budding and trees beginning to display green where only bare limbs have been for several months.  The rabbits, the weather and the genteel setting combine to be a happy respite for families strolling as twilight comes during the week or in full sun on Saturday or Sunday.

For Kansas Citians, the aura of Easter is a time for gaiety, renewal and rebirth.  The Easter Rabbits appeared on the Plaza in the 1930s, a time when the people of our city and of this nation were in great need of all of those things.  The Great Depression had left very few people with the means to enjoy a shopping center.  The news was filled with stories about unemployment, bread lines and bank failures.  Work was scarce and fear about the future lurked as daily stress for most families.  When those stories didn’t fill the newspaper, the reporting turned to the war in Europe and speculation that the winds of war would sweep the United States into another foreign war.  Only a few years after these Easter Rabbits made their first appearance, Union Station had become the crossroads of the nation for young men in uniform traveling to their duty or returning.

The Plaza was opened in 1922 so you could say that it was almost the same age as my mother.  Perhaps it was the coincidence of their births that made mom love the place so much but, more likely, it was the Christmas Lights and the Easter Bunnies - particularly the bunnies.  Winnie’s mom loved the bunnies as well.  In fact, among our prized family photos are some shots of our girls and Winnie’s mom, all wearing their new Easter dresses and hugging the bunnies on a nice bright Easter Sunday now thirty or more years ago.  Our moms were typical of their generation when it came to the Easter Rabbits on the Plaza - the bunnies were loved but the memories they evoked were always of the happy times and fond memories.

Of course Easter is a uniquely Christian time.  Easter rabbits and Easter bonnets are not elements of the Easter story.  The days leading to Easter marked the time when the greatest despair rolled over the disciples like a dense cold fog that the sun couldn’t lift.  From His triumphant arrival in Jerusalem to His last supper with the disciples, Jesus let his followers know that the time for completing His task was at hand.  It came to pass and his followers felt disconnected, unmoored, and perhaps betrayed.  Their expectations were completely dashed as His mortal death on the cross felt like the end.  But then came Easter.  Jesus rose as a sign to all believers that there is renewal, rebirth, resurrection. 

If I had been a twenty-something father of two girls and the year was 1937, I would probably have been out of work or lucky to have some menial job.  We might have lived in a rooming house south of Westport but blocks north of the Plaza.  When I worked, I’d have ridden the streetcar downtown or out to the east bottoms to work in a factory.  The war was coming and I would have been worried about who would care for my family while I was away and about whether I would return.  Or possibly I’d have been one of the lucky ones who had a regular job and could at least feed my family but these were difficult times when it would have been easy to succumb to the fog of daily despair.

To break the grip of repetitive bad news, on Sundays we might have walked to Mill Creek Park and on to the Plaza.  One of those Sundays could have been Easter and like a warm smile on a cold day, our girls would have feasted their eyes on brand new Easter Bunnies twice their size, adorned in happy colors.  Their red eyes would glow as the daylight faded.  Kids up and down the street could have hugged those bunnies and done ring-around-the-rosie about their big hopping feet.  Smiles might have lightened parents’ hearts that had come there heavy.  The girls probably hopped and skipped along the sidewalk all the way home.  

The bunnies are back.  They know there’s still a need for Easter smiles this year.

--td