It was a decent point, but at least a rabbit has eyes.

“But how do the bell know where you live?” “Here in France the chocolate is brought by a a big bell that flies in from Rome.” As far as she was concerned, I had just explained everything wrong with my country. Which a hand he have a basket and foods.” “He come in the night when one sleep on bed.

“You mean one of these? A rabbit rabbit?” “A rabbit?” The teacher, assuming I’d used the wrong word, positioned her index fingers on top of her head, wriggling them as though they were ears. I knew the word, so I raised my hand, saying, “The rabbit of Easter. “And who brings the chocolate?” the teacher asked. “Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb,” the Italian nanny explained. Simple nouns such as cross and resurrection were beyond our grasp, let alone such a complicated reflexive phrases as “to give of yourself your only begotten son.” Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. Part of the problem had to do with vocabulary. “He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today.” “He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.” “He die one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father.” The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm. “He call his self Jesus and then he be die one day on two…morsels of…lumber.”

She faltered and her fellow country-man came to her aid. “It is,” said one, “a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus…”. The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. The teacher called on the rest of us to explain. “I have no idea what you people are talking about.” It would seem that despite having grown up in a Muslim country, she would have heard it mentioned once or twice, but no. The class attempts, in their broken way, to explain it to her: A student from Morocco is completely unfamiliar with any aspect of the holiday. The students come from many different countries, and most do not speak French very well at all. In his hilarious collection of essays Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris describes trying to explain both the secular and religious aspects of the Easter holiday to a class learning French.

Me talk pretty someday