Easter bunnies in malls

[Tim Bousquet <chicoexaminer@xxxxxxxxx>]

Easter toy expectations rise
More malls hire bunnies to lure children, parents into
stores
By VICTORIA BRETT
Associated Press
03/29/2002

The Easter Bunny is making tracks on Santa Claus'
turf, using one of the biggest Christian holidays as
an opportunity to entice children and their parents to
the mall.

A majority of malls that hire a Santa for December are
now hiring a bunny for at least two weeks before
Easter, and there's a growing expectation among
children who visit the bunny that he'll leave a toy
along with candy in their Easter basket.

"We are seeing a lot of pressure through marketing to
begin to expect a level of present-giving that [kids]
get at Christmas," said Chris Byrne, a New York toy
consultant and editor of The Toy Report.

According to retailers, Easter has become the
second-biggest toy-giving holiday after Christmas.

The big bunny is a way for malls to lure customers,
said Bonnie Fluck, spokeswoman for Cherry Hill Photo
Enterprises in New Jersey, which provides Santas and
bunnies for more than 230 malls across the country.

"It's not really the same draw as Santa," she
acknowledges.

Amber Carr's 4-year-old daughter Anastasia wrote a
letter to the Easter Bunny asking for gifts and
treats.

On Easter Sunday, she will get a basket and a present,
but she won't be going to church.

"It's too complicated," said Carr, of Randolph, Maine.
She and her husband were raised with different
religious backgrounds and decided not to participate
in either as adults, she said.

Daniel Akin, dean of theology at the Southern Baptist
Seminary in Louisville, Ky., sees the arrival of the
mall bunny as an example of the commercial
exploitation of Christianity.

"That is not what Easter was about to begin with and
it's not what it should be about today," he said.

But the Rev. Eric Shafer, director of the Evangelican
Lutheran Church in America, says the Easter Bunny is
an opportunity to spread the Christian word, like a
good ad campaign.

"Many churches have Easter egg hunts," he said. "The
real question is, do you complain what secular society
has done with religious symbols or do you use it as an
opportunity. I say the latter."


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