A Happy Easter

An American friend asked me yesterday how Easter is celebrated in Switzerland. In this strongly Catholic and Protestant country, I suppose there's all the church stuff going on, with plenty of wine and bread Communion snacks. (A wineseller friend of mine, Jean-Philippe, in Neuchatel was consulted on why in the Protestant church everyone gets a sip of wine, but in the Catholic church, only the priests get to sip the wine. He said he didn't know, but did note that one of the medieval popes put his blessing on using white wine for communion, which makes you wonder if he thought Jesus' blood was a little anemic. But we digress.)

The most visible icon of Easter here in CH is, as it is in America, not J.H.C. pinned to a cross, but a bunny. Lots of bunnies. Big bunnies. All in chocolate. It seems that every store has hordes of giant brown bunnies in the windows. Supermarkets have big displays with monster bunnies in profile, all staring at you out of their one eye. Kind of scary -- Donny Darko comes to the Land of Chocolate.

But then, this morning when I got up and went into the kitchen to make coffee, I found that a very sweet bunny indeed had visited our home, and left something just outside.

The note says "Joyeuses Paques" -- Happy Easter. Inside were the hoped-for chocolate eggs and ...
 

Nothing scary about this cutie. Nor about our sweet neighbors who left these goodies for us. In this spirit, the wife and I wish you all Joyeuses Paques full of good wine and chocolate!