Soon the peeps will be here! Now depending on your age, you are envisioning one of two things. If you are my children’s age, you’ve got your group of friends or family in your mind. For to Bethany and Andrew, “peeps” are those with whom they enjoy spending time. And it is nothing out of the ordinary for me to hear one of the announce they are going to visit their peeps, call their peeps, text their peeps or have their peeps come see them. I’ll admit it has taken some time for me to get accustomed to but people is far from what I think of when I hear the word, “peeps”.
If you are like me, peeps have nothing to do “with” people per say. And to spend time with, call, text or visit a peep is totally incomprehensible! You don’t text a peep, you eat them!!!! Yep, “peeps” to most of us remain those marshmallow creatures that appear weeks leading up to Easter. They are those yellow and pink fluffs of something that some candy manufacturer needed to create as a means of disposing the unwanted marshmallow mass from Christmas. Those tons of marshmallows that went unsold during the holiday season must not go to waste. S’mores unmade are now creatures smiling behind cellophane wrappings at your neighborhood grocery store. They chirp, bark, or whatever a peep says, “Take me home. I want you to eat so many of me your tummy hurts”. Oh you know what I’m talking about. I know you do.
Before you label me as I Peep hater, I am not. I have nothing against those puffy creatures rolled in sugar so they have some sort of taste. Nope, not at all. My disdain for them comes for a nightmarish experience as a child. It was on a quick road trip from El Paso to Dallas to visit my grandparents that mine disappeared. I had just received my surprise bunnies (or were they chicks?) and we loaded up to head out. Not long into the trip I began to look for my Peeps. To my disbelief, they were gone. Understand, for a seven year old, to have his Peeps disappear, this was traumatizing. After much consternation and trying to figure out why I could not move so easily in my seat, I found my Peeps. They went to Peep heaven that warm spring afternoon. My Peeps decided to go exploring between my bottom and the back of the seat where they happened upon an obstacle and melted away. Well, not quite all away. There was the gooey mess that adhered my bottom to the seat of my mom’s Capri. To this day, I fear the creatures. To some a yummy treat, to me a gooey mess that has the potential of gluing my lungs shut and suffocating me.
However with the appearance of the perplexing Peeps, it does signal one thing for which I am thankful, Easter. See, Easter is the culmination of something really special. While some see the day as an opportunity to hide eggs, millions have for centuries and will on that day celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. At Christmas, we celebrate his birth and on Easter, we celebrate him dying on the cross and rising again for you and me. So this year, may I ask you to do something for me? When you see those evil creations we consume and call, Peeps, think about the real reason we celebrate Easter. Just as Jesus is the reason for the season at Christmas, he is too at Easter.
And thank you for allowing your friendly hardware store guy the opportunity to say a word or two about Jesus. Happy Easter and I’ll see you soon.