I attended the White House Egg Roll in 1988. I have vague memories of standing in a long line of children and grownups waiting to get onto the packed White House grounds. After a brief encounter with a fuzzy Easter bunny, I made a frantic timed jaunt through a stack of hay bales to find my souvenir Easter Egg, signed by George B. Was it the current vice president George Bush senior, my mom eagerly asked the attendant, who squinted at it. No, I think it's George Burns, they replied. My mother recently sent me that George B--- signed egg, wooden and painted turquoise, with the event's details on it — while I was in the final throes of editing my new book, "Egg."
Nothing could be more American than the White House Egg Roll. And yet, like the egg itself — simultaneously alive and not-alive — it offers a slate of contradictions. The United States is supposed to preserve the distinction between church and state, yet we have an Easter Egg Roll on government property. Dig below the event's thin veneer of Christianity and you'll find a pagan springtime ritual. We value equality, and yet Black children could not attend the event until the 1950s.
