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The Easter Bunny: One highly evolved and exceptionally skilled, multi-tasking rodent.

By Alex Smith

Spoiler Alert: Parents, the following post contains some candid discussion regarding the Easter Bunny, as well as his friends Santa and the Tooth Fairy, that may not be entirely appropriate for young eyes. Hop along accordingly!

I’m not sure when it dawned on me, but it wasn’t a dramatic epiphany. I’m talking, of course, about my gradual realization that beloved childhood figures like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus were not, in fact, all that I’d been earnestly informed they were.

For a start, I grew up in an apartment in New York City, so the notion of St. Nicholas squeezing his pronounced posterior down any chimneys was out of the question. I’m not sure what my parents told me about his method of entry, but I seem to recall believing that he somehow arrived through our stereo, which occupied a place in our living room where a fireplace would have been. That didn't make a whole lot of sense either, but at the time, I wasn’t troubled by such nuances: There were presents to be opened.

The Easter Bunny made even less sense. From what I understood, Santa had a squadron of flying reindeer (nope, nothing dubious about that) and a backup crew of ninja-stealthy elves to help him accomplish his appointed rounds, but the `Bunny worked alone. How a solitary anthropomorphic rodent was supposed to be able to deliver a payload of chocolate eggs and whatnot to all the good little children around the world begged an awful lot of difficult logistical questions. After a while, I just stopped buyin’ it.

The good news, of course, was that in both cases, it didn’t actually matter. It’s not like the treats dried up when it was disclosed that the Easter Bunny was a cotton-tailed sham. The bad news was that when I finally saw through the ruse, an irreplaceable portion of my childhood innocence was gone forever.

Decades later, the shoe is on the other foot; I now have two little children of my own. When they were born, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be a party to the perpetuation of “the big lie.” I guess I was just uncomfortable with the notion of telling any sort of lie – “little white” or otherwise – to my kids, being that is set both a bad example and a bad precedent.

That noble notion was swiftly dismissed by my wife and my mother, who, as I detailed in a recent post, gets a big kick out of orchestrating Easter egg hunts. Those ladies couldn’t wait to regale my kids with whimsical tales about the Easter Bunny. For them, instilling that fanciful mythology into their little lives and watching their eyes grow wide with anticipation was an accepted part of the child-rearing process, and not to be trifled with.

More to the point, while I secretly relished the idea of my kids being prematurely sharp and savvy, did I really want to be the parent of the brat who snottily crushes other children’s hopes and dreams by coldly informing them that no, Virginia, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and, for that matter, The Tooth Fairy do not exist? That child has no friends.

So, I kept my mouth shut and dutifully adhered to the party line, doing my best to support the illusion whenever necessary. I deftly fielded the tough procedural questions as best I could, volunteering tenuously rational explanations of how the Easter Bunny and Santa accomplished their respective missions.

Now, a couple of years into it, my 6-year-old Oliver’s belief in the `Bunny and the fat man in red borders on zealous fundamentalism. Charlotte, my 8-year-old, however -- being the bright and inquisitive little girl she is --  appears to be furtively harboring some fresh doubts, gamely holding her tongue from voicing her concerns lest she ruin the proceedings for her little brother.  

On a recent walk to school, my kids started suddenly interrogating me, demanding to know how the Easter Bunny always seemed to know which relative’s home we were visiting each Easter. While I stammered out a largely unsupportable answer, I caught Charlotte’s eye, and could have sworn she gave me a knowing wink. It was a wink that simultaneously made me very proud and broke my heart at the same time.

I’m so encouraged that she’s sussed it out for herself, but I finally understand what my wife and mother were talking about. They only remain wide-eyed, little and readily-delighted for so long before wisdom and experience change them forever. Savor the Easter Bunny days while you can.

What’s a father to do? What do you tell your kids? Tell us in the comments below.

Alex Smith is a senior editor at TODAY.com who firmly believes in the Loch Ness monster.

It's almost Easter Sunday. Are you ready to put your egg-decorating skills back to work? Check out the video below for some helpful tips on how to make your egg shells shine this holiday season.

TF Technologies

TFunPhoto Easter Edition

Get a jump on a happier Easter holiday with these fun Android, iOS and Windows Phone apps.

Purple Penguin.com

Easter Bunny My Face (free on iTunes)
Want to see how you’d look as the Easter Bunny? Transform your face with a selection of three bunny noses and three bunny ears. Then share the results through text, email or Facebook. Or try TFun Photo Easter Edition for Windows Phone (free on Windows Phone Marketplace)

Easter! Find ‘em (99 cents on Google Play)
Can’t wait until Easter to start the egg hunt? With Easter! Find ‘em, you can seek more than 100 objects that the Easter Bunny has hidden in realistic-looking grass. The app even tells you what you should be looking for, so you won’t pass anything up.

Swiss Codemonkeys

Easter Egg Paint (free on Google Play)
Add paint decorations on an Easter egg, add a personal message and send off your Easter wishes. You can share via Facebook or set as your wallpaper.

Rocket Bunny (free on Google Play or iTunes)
Help the Easter bunny deliver eggs with your rocket-boosted bunny. Navigate with one hand, while you drop eggs with the other, but you’ll have to watch out for bees along the way. There’s an ad-free version for $1.04 as well.

Random House

Pat the Bunny ($2.99 on iTunes)
The Pat the Bunny interactive book has 14 interactive scenes, every page can be used as a coloring book and your child can use the device’s front facing camera to see himself in the book. On April 1, it will get a special, limited-time Easter update. You’ll be able to find the hidden egg in each scene and watch Bunny open them to reveal the surprises hidden inside.

StoryChimes Story of Easter (99 cents on Google Play or iTunes)
This book covers the major parts of the Easter story from the Last Supper, to Jesus' death and resurrection. The book includes read along and read-to-me modes, plus a matching game.

Robert Bennett

Easter Bunny Fingers! (99 cents on iTunes)
Want some evidence that the Easter Bunny (or bunnies) exist? This augmented reality app has them popping up all over your neighborhood when you “reveal” them through the camera on your phone.

More stories on Techlicious:

• The Best Dr. Seuss Books and Apps
• Great Personalized Children's Books
• Safe Social Networking Sites for Kids & Tweens

Get Suzanne's free daily Techlicious Newsletter or chat with her on Facebook.

Just in time for Easter, start outfitting your little ones in the pastel colors of the season. Take a look at the clip below to learn about the latest Easter fashion trends. 

How are you planning to dress your children for Easter?

Alex Smith

Little Charlotte finds a keeper

By Alex Smith

My mother has been treating my kids to elaborate Easter egg hunts practically since they were able to walk, just as she did for my older sister and me when we were still toddlers. It's a festive family tradition that never fails to delight my two little children. Few things make them giggle ecstatically as much as scurrying around my mother's lawn, gathering basketfuls of brightly colored plastic eggs, to say nothing of gobbling up the little bits of chocolate hidden in each.

That latter aspect tends to make them bounce off the walls for the next several hours, but as my mom is quick to point out: “Oh, let them… it’s Easter!” My wife and I are usually hovering not too far off, vainly attempting to make sure each child finds a relatively equal amount. My mom invests a painstaking degree of detail in the narrative, leaving clue-laden notes under the alias of the Easter Bunny for my kids to decipher. The whole event is quite a production.

As the holiday approaches, I’ve thinking about the whole ritual of Easter egg-hunting. Though I was raised Roman Catholic, our family was never particularly religious, and it struck me that the whole Easter Bunny thing was a purely secular offshoot of the holiday (unless, of course, there was some passage in the Bible I missed ... which is entirely possible).

But how did the two come to be conjoined? How did the central feast of the Christian liturgical year -- a day that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ  -- become equated with searching for multicolored chocolate eggs left behind by an anthropomorphic rabbit? I figured it had to do with a druidic fertility rite or some such, but really hadn't a firm clue about it.

As I sat in my office ruminating aloud about the whole thing, a coworker spoke up almost as if by divine providence. As it turns out, brand marketing manager Bret Sorkness is something of an expert on the mysterious doings of the Easter Bunny. All this time I'd been sitting but a garishly painted egg's throw from a bona fide authority. Who knew?

Bret had actually crafted an essay on the whole phenomenon back in 2007, and it made for fascinating reading. I was particularly intrigued by the passage below (cryptically titled "What We Don't Know About the Bunny"):

The notion of a rabbit that lays eggs has an uncertain past. It may have simply arisen from confusion of symbolism but, like much of the holiday of Easter itself; it could be a direct heritage from older traditions. In Germanic and Slavic languages, the word "Easter" comes from an ancient pagan goddess of the spring named Eostre. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became the modern Easter Bunny.

The precise origin of the custom of coloring eggs is not known, although it too is ancient; Greeks to this day typically dye their Easter eggs red, the color of blood, in recognition of the renewal of life in springtime (and, later, the blood of the sacrificed Christ). Some also use the color green, in honor of the new foliage emerging after the long "dead" time of winter. Other colors, including the pastels popular in the United States and elsewhere (possibly symbolizing the rainbow), seem to have come along later.

The idea of an egg-laying bunny came to the United States in the 18th century. German immigrants in the Pennsylvania Dutch area told their children about the "Osterhase." "Hase" means "hare", not rabbit, and in Northwest European folklore the "Easter Bunny" indeed is a hare, not a rabbit. According to the legend, only good children received gifts of colored eggs in the nests that they made in their caps and bonnets before Easter.

Regardless of their origins, the practices of egg-decorating, egg-hiding and even egg-rolling have been going on for generations. This coming Easter, The White House will host its 134th Easter Egg Roll. Myriad variations on the tradition will be in full swing around the globe.

While I’m never one to enjoy greeting the day on the early side, I am genuinely looking forward to the telltale peals of giddy, childish laughter that will start my Easter Sunday as I watch my little ones, still clad in pajamas, peering out the window at a lawn festooned with brightly colored Easter eggs.

How does your family celebrate?

Alex Smith is a senior editor at TODAY.com. He prefers his eggs in plain sight, fried and sunny side up.

Slideshow: Easters of yesteryear

Norman Smith / Getty Images

As the lion of March gives way to the lamb and we prepare for the bloom of spring, here's a fond look back at some Easter celebrations of yesteryear.

Launch slideshow