Easter Fiesta

In America, Easter is typically a pretty mild, traditional holiday. Rather than going out on the town and getting sloppy drunk, people celebrate the resurrection of the Savior of the world with a little more reverence - by dressing up in bunny costumes, hiding colorful eggs, and searching for Easter baskets full of chocolates and nasty marshmallow peeps. Last year, my Easter celebration was much along these lines, except that my basket turned out to be a grocery bag full of veggie chips, health snacks, and women’s socks. It always seemed odd to me that we celebrate with bunnies and eggs – two things with very little correlation beyond the idea that one makes whoopee a lot and the other is the result of a lot of whoopee making.

On my trip to Boston over this Easter weekend, I learned that Mexicans celebrate Easter in a much different manner. I was exposed to my first Mexican Easter egg hunt, consisting of a hunt for egg-shaped mini piñatas filled with confetti that you find and smash over someone’s head. Apparently in Mexico they take the resurrection a little more seriously than us Americans.