As it turns out, the Dutch take Easter seriously. Really seriously.
Almost everyone gets a four-day weekend to celebrate Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday, and the following Monday, which is described quite cleverly as "Second Easter Day."
It's also a major commercial holiday, in the sense that the stores have been flooded with Easter candy and Easter flowers and Easter cookies and Easter decorations and Easter toys and 29 different kinds of ham.
As an American for whom Easter is sort of a non-entity, it's a striking phenomenon. And in a basically secular country, I don't really understand what makes Easter so hot.
Maybe the Dutch just find the concept of resurrection to be a marketable one.
Or maybe Dutch consumers are less depressed in the spring and as a result, quite willing to spend their money on chicken decor.
Don't get me wrong: I'm very pro-chicken decor.
I just don't get why Holy Week unleashes a tsunami of it.
Commercialism or not, I'm grateful for the four-day weekend, especially since we're enjoying a freakish string of perfect, sunny days in which I honestly cannot remember the last time it rained.
I should be enjoying said freakishness without reservation, but I have to admit that it also fills me with a unshakable sense of dread.
As in, sure, we're getting two weeks of beautiful sunshine now, but I am convinced that it is going to end soon and then rain ALL SUMMER LONG.
Coincidentally, an American friend of mine in Nijmegen described having the exact same feeling — so while all of the Dutch people I know are giddy with delight about the unusual weather, there's something about the expat experience that makes us suspicious of Mother Nature's trickery.
Commercialism or not, I'm grateful for the four-day weekend, especially since we're enjoying a freakish string of perfect, sunny days in which I honestly cannot remember the last time it rained.
I should be enjoying said freakishness without reservation, but I have to admit that it also fills me with a unshakable sense of dread.
As in, sure, we're getting two weeks of beautiful sunshine now, but I am convinced that it is going to end soon and then rain ALL SUMMER LONG.
Coincidentally, an American friend of mine in Nijmegen described having the exact same feeling — so while all of the Dutch people I know are giddy with delight about the unusual weather, there's something about the expat experience that makes us suspicious of Mother Nature's trickery.
But all of this is a long way to say that John and I needed a four-day weekend to recover after discovering in our mailbox last week the following advertising circular from one of the Netherlands' largest department stores.
What, you may reluctantly ask, is the Dutch tag line for this tableau featuring a terrifying Easter Bunny and an unsuspecting little girl?
EASTER SURPRISE!
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