How God helped me prove the Easter bunny really exists

Whenever I think of Easter, I can’t help but recall all those times I have painted myself into a corner and the Good Lord has held out a helping hand to extricate me with my dignity intact.

The ultimate example of ask and ye shall receive was Easter Sunday about 30 years ago when my eldest son was ten years old and a know-all of note.

After returning from morning Mass, I would send the kids into the kitchen while I supposedly would go on a recce to see if I could spot the Easter bunny.

Meantime, all I would be doing was to maintain that devious tradition of planting Easter eggs in every nook and cranny I could find in the garden. Upon completion of that task, I would rush into the kitchen, yelling: Quickly, come and see! The Easter bunny! Then I would look terribly disappointed as the children flew out of the door and say: Oh shame, what a pity, you just missed him.

That year 30 years ago, as I was about to set off on my recce, my eldest sidled up to me and told me that I was not fooling him one bit. There was, he declared, no such thing as an Easter bunny, and if I did not stop treating him like a child he would expose my scam by telling his younger brother and sister that not only was the Easter bunny a figment of my romantic imagination, but that Father Christmas didn’t exist either.

Before I knew what I was doing I was bending down and looking him in his pre-pubescent eye. Through clenched teeth I told him that he would be finding himself devoid of Easter eggs, pocket money and any form of paternal recognition for ten years on the trot if he said one single word to his brother and sister.

Instead of just leaving it at that, I went and painted myself into a corner again.

Just you watch, you doubting Thomas, I said, I will prove beyond any doubt that the Easter bunny not only exists but has the capacity to deliver billions of Easter eggs to billions of children all at the same time.

Somewhat shaken and wide-eyed at my unbecoming Easter behaviour, the boy slouched condescendingly into the kitchen.

As I planted the Easter eggs, I asked God what he thought had possessed me to make such a rash promise, and, without waiting for an answer, I asked if he would be kind enough to somehow bail me out of the predicament into which I had so blindly flown.

I rushed into the kitchen yelling hysterically about the Easter bunny, shooed the kids out into the garden with my eldest, still in full slouch mode, bringing up the rear.

As he set foot into the garden, and a split second before I came up with the usual Oh shame, you’ve just missed him line, my daughter, wide-eyed and speechless for the first time in her little life, pointed at the hedge as the biggest white rabbit I have ever seen hopped through a hole, went bounce, bounce, bounce across our garden, and disappeared into the neighbouring garden.

There was the mother of pregnant pauses. My children looked at me and asked why I was pointing heavenwards instead of towards the point where the rabbit had disappeared.

I am not pointing at the sky, I said, God is holding my hand.

Not giving them a chance to ask what that meant, I turned to my son and with as much gusto as I could muster said: Don’t ever tell me again that you don’t believe in the Easter bunny.

He is 40 years old now and not a Christmas or Easter goes by that he doesn’t phone to reaffirm, with all the sincerity he can muster, his belief that the Easter bunny is alive and well and that Father Christmas can come down a chimney even if a house hasn’t got one.

I’m sure God forgave me for lying through my teeth when the children asked me if I knew anything about where that rabbit had come from.

I didn’t say a word even when I found out the next day that my neighbour had bought it at the pet shop to give to his nephew for Easter. While he was trying to get it out of its cage and into a gift basket it escaped and headed for the hedge between our gardens. At precisely and exactly the right moment.

But, I believe it was divine intervention and indeed, a miracle, all the same. Not so much in what happened, but in the timing which was far too perfect to be mere coincidence.