I'm not sure when Easter turned into the second coming of Christmas, but it is ridiculous how extravagant the store displays have gotten. Although any secular gluttony seems a bit weird to me since our standard Easter goodies were typically a bookmark that said "He Is Risen" and a package of yellow Peeps. If I haven't mentioned it before, my mom is fairly religious (Episcopalian) and we didn't "do" stuff like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. We gifted and celebrated and had egg hunts, but always with the "reason for the season" in mind. I never felt jipped and although I am not nearly as dedicated to matters of faith as my mother, I try to remind my kids how these holidays came to be and that they are not merely an excuse to get stuff.
So when I am putting together Easter baskets, I am truly wearing my EcoCheapo hat and trying to assemble them using a little "new" as possible because even better than something that was made in an environmentally responsible way is something that was not "made" for this occasion at all. In the immortal words of Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally, "It's already out there".
