Realizing Easter {Monologue}
Production Notes
Realizing Easter is a stand-alone monologue chronicling a father’s reflections on Easter’s past with his sons, and the moment he discovers the real and personal meaning of Easter. It was originally written for and performed at Northwest Assembly of God.
Script
Easter was one of the best times of year when my boys were little. We used to wake up early the day before to get good spots in line at the neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt . . . my boys would come home with candy by the bag full. After the egg hunts we’d come home to my wife having boiled what seemed like a hundred eggs, decorate them until late afternoon, and eat those silly marshmallow peeps over some movie. I never really liked those peeps, but the boys loved them, and it wasn’t Easter without ’em.
As boys often do, they started growing up and egg hunts, decorating hard boiled eggs, and eating marshmallow peeps became a thing of the past. We tried to substitute with family dinners where girlfriends . . . fiances . . . and later wives started joining. Now that they’ve all moved away, we take turns having Easter at all of their houses, but it’s just not the same anymore. A lot of things haven’t been for quite some time . . . and the more that I’ve tried to shake my feelings of unsettledness the more I’m realizing the marshmallow peeps and egg hunts wouldn’t make them go away even if I could go back to share them with my boys again.
The cloud of uneasiness remained until our Easter trip this year to visit our eldest Adam in Michigan. He sat me down and started telling me the story of Easter . . . how a man named Jesus died for us and then came alive again to save us . . . and something inside of me began to stir.
In all my years as a father, I had never encountered the passion and earnestness with which my son spoke. I understood for the first time that the story of Easter meant something for me. That it was more than a legend, more than a myth, more than just a religious story. It turned into light for me . . . light that pushed the clouds around my heart away. It was real . . . and I’ve never been the same again.