Santa Claus Versus The Easter Bunny

Santa Claus vs.
the Easter Bunny

David Sedaris
Listen to the story be read out loud here:

Santa Claus Vs. The Easter Bunny - This American Life
Introduction:
A while back, writer David Sedaris moved to France, where he enrolled in a school to study
French. He was the only American in his class. As he explained to an audience back here in the
states afterwards, the problem wasn’t just communication. It was also his teacher. She could be
kind of mean.
David Sedaris
Oh, she would throw chalk at people, and stabbed someone in the eye with a pencil one day,
and would hold your homework paper over your head and show everyone the mistakes that you
made. So I wrote a story about her. And she read it, and I got thrown out of school.
This is another story about her.
Story Begins:
David Sedaris
It was my second month of French class and the teacher was leading us in an exercise
designed to promote the use of our latest personal pronoun. Printed in our textbooks was a
brief list of major holidays alongside a scattered arrangement of photos capturing French
people in the act of celebration. The object was to match the holiday with the corresponding
picture. Today's discussion was dominated by a Russian nanny, two chatty Poles, and a pouty,
plump Moroccan woman who had grown up speaking French and had enrolled in the class
hoping to improve her spelling.
She had covered these lessons back in the third grade, and took every opportunity to
demonstrate her superiority. She had recently transferred to the class. And we could not wait
until she was booted up to her appropriate level. Midway through the first day, she had raised
her hand so many times her shoulder had given out. Now she just leaned back in her seat and
shouted the answers, her bronzed arms folded across her chest like some great grammar
genie.
We had finished discussing New Year's Eve, and the teacher had moved on to Easter, which
was represented in our textbook by a black and white photograph of a chocolate bell lying
upon a bed of palm fronds. "And what does one do on Easter? Would anyone like to tell us?" It
was, for me, another one of those holidays I'd just as soon avoid.
Growing up, my family had generally ignored the Easter celebrated by our non-Orthodox
friends and neighbors, leading to the suspicion that we might be either Jews or Communists.
As Greeks, we had our own Easter which was usually observed anywhere from two to four
weeks after what was known in our circle as "the American version." The reason had to do
with the moon or the Orthodox calendar, something mysterious like that. Though our mother
always suspected it was scheduled at a later date so that the Greeks could buy their
marshmallow chicks and plastic grass at drastically reduced sale prices. "The cheap sons of
bitches," she'd say, "If they had their way, we'd be celebrating Christmas in the middle of god
damn February."
A brave Italian was attempting to answer the teacher's latest question, when the Moroccan
student interrupted, shouting, "Excuse me, but what's an Easter?" Despite having grown up in
a Muslim country, it seems she might have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. "I mean
it," she said, "I have no idea what you people are talking about." The teacher then called upon
the rest of us to explain. The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability.
"It is," said one, "a party for the little boy of God who call hisself Jesus and-- you know, like
that." She faltered, and her fellow countrymen came to her aid. "He call hisself Jesus, and
then he die one day on two morsels of lumber."
The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the Pope an
aneurysm. "He die one day. And then he go above of my head to live with your father." "He
weared the long hair. And after he died the first day, he come back here for to say hello to the
peoples." "He nice. He make the good thing. And on the Easter, we be sad, because someone
made him dead today."
Part of the problem had to do with grammar. Simple nouns, such as "cross" and
"Resurrection," were beyond our grasp, let alone such complicated reflexive verbs as "to give
of yourself your only begotten son." Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of
Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about food
instead.
"Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb," an Italian student explained. "One, too, may eat of
the chocolate." "And who brings the chocolate?" The teacher asked. I knew the word, and so I
raised my hand saying, "The rabbit of Easter." "He bring of the chocolate."
My classmates reacted as though I had pinned the delivery on a house cat. They were
mortified. A rabbit? A rabbit?
The teacher, assuming I had used the wrong word, positioned her index fingers on top of her
head, wiggling them as though they were ears. "You mean one of these? A rabbit, rabbit?"
"Well, sure," I said, "he come in the night when one sleep on a bed. With a hand, he have the
basket, like for a bread."
The Moroccan rolled her eyes, and the teacher sadly shook her head as if this explained
everything that was wrong with my country. "No, no," she said, "here in France, the chocolate
is brought by a big bell that flies in from Rome." I called for a time-out. "But how do the bell
know where you live?" "Well," she said, "how does a rabbit?" It was a decent point, but at least
a rabbit has eyes. That's a start.
Rabbits move from place to place, while most bells can only go back and forth. And they can't
even do that on their own power. On top of that, the Easter bunny has character. He's
someone you'd like to meet. A bell has all the personality of a cast iron skillet. It's like saying
that come Christmas, a magic dust pan flies in from the North Pole, led by eight flying cinder
blocks.
Who wants to stay up all night, so they can see a bell? And why fly one in from Rome when
they've got more bells than they know what to do with right there in Paris? That's the most
implausible aspect of the whole story. Because there's no way the bells of France would allow
a foreign worker to fly in. There's no way the bells of France would allow a foreign worker to
fly in and take their job. That Roman bell would be lucky to get work cleaning up after a
French bell's dog.
And how does a bell hold the candy if it doesn't have any arms? How does it get into your
house without being heard? It just didn't add up. I suppose similar questions could be asked
of the Easter bunny. I had just never thought about it that hard.
Nothing we said was of any help whatsoever to the Moroccan woman.

I wondered then if, without the language barrier, my classmates and I could have done a
better job making sense of Christianity, an idea that sounds pretty far-fetched to begin with. In
communicating any religious belief, the operative word is faith, a concept illustrated by our
very presence in that classroom. Why bother struggling with the lessons of a six-year-old if
each of us didn't believe that, against all reason, we might eventually improve? I'm not sure
how that fits in with the Resurrection, but if I could hope to one day carry on a fluent
conversation, it was a relatively short leap to believing that a rabbit might visit my home in
the middle of the night, leaving behind a handful of chocolate kisses and a carton of menthol
cigarettes. A bell though, that's f** up.

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Santa Claus vs.

the Easter Bunny

Listen to the story be read out loud here:

This is another story about her.

Nothing we said was of any help whatsoever to the Moroccan woman.

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