A Big Holiday in Our House
Easter was a big one in my house growing up. It also taught me, at nine or ten, exactly where dinner comes from. That lesson stuck harder than any sermon.Share on X
It was always a big holiday in my house.
My parents were Church of Christ and they took the Easter traditions seriously, the church side and the fun side both. There was always the Easter bunny, the baskets, the whole production. As a kid I loved it. It was one of the warmer holidays of the year, full of spring and color and the kind of ritual that makes childhood feel safe.
It also handed me one of the sharpest lessons of my early life, and it came wrapped in something soft.
The Year of Fluffy
I got a pet rabbit for Easter and named him Fluffy. A few days later, dinner tasted different. We were a rural family. You can guess the rest.Share on X
One Easter when I was young, maybe nine or ten, I got a real rabbit. A live one. I named him Fluffy, and Fluffy was my friend. I got some chicks too. We played together, the way a kid plays with a new pet, and for those few days he was mine.
Then, a day or two later, I noticed the food on the dinner plate tasted a little different. It took me a minute to understand why. We were eating Fluffy.
We lived in a rural area, and eating the animals you raised wasn’t unusual.
It was just how things worked out there. But understanding that, as a kid, about my own pet, was a shock that’s stayed with me my whole life. Fluffy went from friend to dinner in the span of a few days, and nobody thought it was strange except me. That’s the kind of moment that doesn’t fade. Decades later I can still feel exactly how that realization landed.
Why the Unsentimental Story Works
Here’s the writing lesson, because there’s one, and it’s the reason I can still tell this story. The hard, unsentimental truth is what makes it stick.
I could tell you a soft Easter story about baskets and pastel eggs, and you’d forget it before you finished reading.
The Fluffy story you’ll remember, because it doesn’t flinch. It takes a warm, innocent holiday and tells the true thing that happened, even though the true thing is uncomfortable. That contrast, the sweet setup and the hard turn, is what makes it work. Sentiment fades. The honest, specific, slightly painful detail is what readers keep.
That’s true of all good writing. The temptation is always to smooth the rough edge, to make the memory prettier than it was. Resist it. The rough edge is the part people remember. A story that tells the truth, even an uncomfortable one, beats a pretty story that says nothing every single time.
How do you spend Easter?
Celebrate it however it means something to you, the religious traditions, the family gathering, the baskets and the hunt for the kids. It’s a holiday of renewal and spring, and there’s a lot of good in it.
And if you’re a writer, take the Fluffy lesson with you. When you write about your own life, tell the true version, including the parts that aren’t pretty. The childhood memory that still has an edge on it, the holiday that taught you something hard, those are the stories worth writing down. Just maybe keep a closer eye on the family pet than I did.