Department 56: Evoking Easter Memories

Easter is delightful, and Department 56 has found a way to bring back joyful memories of traditions played out during every spring of my childhood.

Dept 56, Snow Village,
"Easter Egg Painting Studio," 56.55385

Dyeing Easter Eggs  This delightful pastel building is obviously a master rabbit's dyeing studio and school.  Admission standards to the Egg Painting Studio are high, resulting in an immensely qualified and creative student body.  Peter Cottonfur and other students study the art of egg preparation, pigment production, egg decoration, drying processes, basket procurement, and egg distribution schemes.  Though the students grow weary of the daily routines, they know that becoming a certified master of egg painting will give them artistic license to create their own lines for discriminating buyers at the finest shops, Bloomingeggs, Eggcy's, Neiman Mareggs, and Sak's Fifth Eggsenue.

Depart 56, Snow Village,
"It's the Easter Bunny!" 56.55164

Easter Bunnies  While Easter Bunnies take their professions seriously, they recognize that it is seasonal employment.  They do have continuing education, mostly during the summer, including courses on public relations and product distribution techniques. In the fall, Easter bunnies embark on a severe regimen of physical training to preparing for the arduous job of hauling around millions of baskets and tons of eggs in such a short period of time.  It isn't just carrying heavy baskets, it is the constant squatting down and standing up, necessary in the egg hiding process, that wreaks havoc on bunnies' knees.  Attempts at Easter Bunny unionization have failed, given that most professional bunnies wish to maintain independence in their artistic endeavors and personal relationships with children.

Dept 56, Snow Village,
"One Hop Walk," 56.55160

Green Grass and Warm Sunshine    Easter Village Event Planners take great care in the production of the best possible traditional holiday activities, including Easter Egg Dyeing for Amateurs;  Easter Egg Hunts for Children; fashion acquisition of adorable, yet up-to-date, attire, particularly for infants and children; and other pursuits that will create lifelong memories.  However, the most difficult job for the Easter Event Planner is to ensure sunshine, green grass, and cheerful flowers.  Given web technology, it is easy to identify Easter dates far in advance, and to plant adequate acreage of seasonally-appropriate flower species.  However, the procurement of good weather is very complicated, and only journeyman level Easter Event Planners have mastered the art.

Dept 56, Dickens Village,
"A Basket Full of Blooms," 56.58583

Beautiful Flowers  Easter lilies are symbolic, elegant, fragrant, and evocative, and necessary to lifelong Easter memory-making.  The natural white shade of Easter lilies is the color standard used by Master Egg Painters in selecting perfectly "white" eggs for their best artistic pieces. Easter bunnies have long favored Easter lily foliage as a perfect natural background for pastel eggs.

Dept 56, Snow Village,
"Lily's Nursery and Gifts," 56.55095

Easter Event Planners can count on adequate supplies of Easter lilies to embellish any party venue, in part due to Lily's Nursery and Gifts, which always plans for all the lilies that Easter requires.

Dept 56, Snow Village,
"Dressed in Our Easter
Best," 56.55327

Easter Clothes  A prerequisite for any Easter event, and the making of any Easter memory, is new finery.  Stylish new clothes serve to celebrate renewal, the beginning of spring, the celebration of life.  New Easter attire has lately been ignored in favor of the practical jeans and t-shirts.  However, childhood memories can tell of us days past, when a new dress, new hat, new shoes, or new jacket made us smile. Dressed in Our Easter Best

Dept 56, Christmas in the City,
"Window Shoppers," 56.59481

In urban areas, such as CIC, elegant and festive Easter parades afford men and women the opportunity to gather, mostly to see what everyone else was wearing.  Especially anticipated are the big hats, with feathers, and flowers, and even birds perched in netting.  Children are not allowed to laugh and point at the hat birds.  Parents admonish them, with threats that the Easter Bunny will not visit.  Development of Child Manners is also a course at the Easter Egg Painting Studio.  It is taken very seriously. 

Dept 56, Snow Village,
"Happy Easter Church,'
56. 55325

Easter Morning Church  Many show off their new finery for the first time on Easter morning at church.  Easter is the best time ever at church, especially when coffee and donuts are served afterwards, and everyone is smiling.  Sometimes the Easter Bunny forms an alliance with the pastor of the church for an egg hunt post-service, but more frequently the egg hunt is at home or a local park.

Dept. 56, Snow Village,
"Easter Egg Hunt," 56.55326

Easter Egg Hunts  The highlight of Easter for many young children is the Easter Egg Hunt.  Of course, the Easter Bunny knows this, and is careful to search out hiding places that are age-appropriate for the family.  A one-unit course at the Easter Egg Painting Studio, called "Demographics and the Egg Hiding Paradigm," is required for all certified Easter Bunnies. Quite rightly.

The hunt frequently takes place right after church, during which the children display extraordinary anticipation, and before lunch, which leaves them so hungry that they tend to indulge in "Sucrose Satiation," a malady common to children that affects not them, but their parents.

Dept. 56, Snow Village,
"Chocolate Bunny Factory," 56.55355

Candy, Candy, Candy  Sucrose Satiation is a result of ingesting lots and lots of candy. During "hiding-of-the-eggs," HOTE,  it is critical for an Easter Bunny to disperse exact proportions of real eggs, properly painted; plastic eggs filled with gum drops and jelly beans; yellow (not pink, and certainly not blue) marshmallow Peeps; and chocolate bunnies. Easter Bunnies must never leave chocolate bunnies in sunny hiding spaces, because they will quickly form bunny baths.  While these are loved by young children, parents find them disconcerting to find bunny bath traces all over their new Easter clothes.  Easter Bunnies also find it disconcerting to find their images melted into brown puddles.