Happy Easter everyone! Gather round as I share a glimpse into my life, or at least portions of my life in which this holiday coincided.
As I mentioned before, cartoons were an important part of holidays. Not exactly as important as spending time with extended family or getting presents and pictures taken, but you get the idea? I guess they could be considered the appetizers of the holiday experience. You revel in the excitement and familiarity of some character saving an entire holiday for the world for yet another year, and you eat said celebration’s dinner with a catchy Rankin Bass song in your heart.
There exists a tape back home that would always make it’s way to the VCR around this time. The tape was created back when premium TV networks of the time (like HBO or Disney Channel) would offer free trial periods, where homes that didn’t have the channel could see what was on and be enticed to add it to their cable package. My how far we’ve come.
I was reminded also of Easter, and this video tape recently, when at the end of February, the co-creator of The Berenstain Bears died. The Berenstain Bears Easter Surprise was among the collection. The songs were appealing, some of the designs (props, backgrounds) were fairly elaborate. And let’s face it, the Easter Bunny’s rant, at least the end of it, is a great quote. (7:51 in the second half)
Also included on the tape, was Jim Henson’s Tale of the Bunny Picnic. I could not find a complete English copy online, but if you speak German, you can watch the full version of it on YouTube. As always, you can hardly go wrong with Muppets, and you gotta give it up for the time and effort in creating an entire village of visually distinct rabbits.
Aside from the holiday specials, there were also unrelated episodes of Fraggle Rock and the French cartoon Seabert the Seal. In my brain files of association, these shows are now intrinsically entwined with this holiday.
Between the shows (apparently in a programming block called HBO for Kids), were a couple shorts. My mom said she has in vain searched for these gems online. One was called Bug Jam which featured 3 bugs (2 + a spider) playing in a band until an enraged human tries to break up the fun after humorously inhaling and expelling the spider while napping. The other is a descriptive poem about a cow, narrated by a small child. The Funny Cow, or something similar.
So there you have it, bears, bunnies, bugs, bovines, and environmental extremists (oh and Fraggles) will always remind me of Easter and vice versa. However you celebrate, whether in church or politely declining those spiced jelly beans at Grandma’s house, I hope you too can take a moment to reminisce on your beloved aspect of the holiday.