10 Easter Outfits You Couldn't Pay Me To Put My Kids In

Easter is right around the corner, which means parents country-wide are buying horrifying ensembles to put on their children because they don’t want their kids to grow up to lead healthy, productive lives. The fastest way to ensure that your kid will never amount to anything is to insist on seasonal costumes for every season. If you don’t have a special child-sized fedora for Groundhog Day, I don’t even want to talk to you.

I’m home in California this week, meaning I’m staying with my parents and cleaning out “my junk” (mostly holiday costumes that I did not buy) from their various storage closets. I’ve been reminiscing with my mom about our own Easter celebrations over the years, which ranged from eating Easter candy until I threw up gleefully, trying to organize an Easter egg hunt but getting into a fight with my sister about placement (we hid the eggs, my parents were supposed to find them. I don’t get it either, but it was apparently my idea), and going to an actual organized Easter egg hunt in Huntington Beach that involved more than one full sized grown up wearing Easter Bunny costumes. They walked around so slowly, like zombie bunnies. Unrelatedly, I spent a lot of time in therapy in the years following.

For me, Easter was less faith-based (as my interfaith family had a loose interpretation of the religious meaning behind holidays), although I was always hyper aware of the religious aspect for my grandparents and mom. I lucked out and didn’t have to do much in terms of thinking about heavy questions or having faith, but got to eat candy and cry over adults in bunny suits. Best of both worlds.

Like any holiday, Easter is filled with assorted detritus that people slap price tags on and say “you should put this on your kid for a more fun/holy/better-than-your-neighbor” holiday. I made my mom look through it all with me, and asked her if she’d put this stuff on me as a kid. I haven’t heard her say no so many times since I asked her about that lip piercing I really, really wanted around 2005.

Here’s 10 Easter outfits you couldn’t pay me to put on my future children, regardless of how much I may love Easter.

1. This stupid vest and hat combo.

easter outfit for boys — Photo: Oriental Trading

Well isn’t this just fit for a future yachtsman. If I wanted my son to feel comfortable making racist comments to the help, I would have just taught him poor ethics and entitlement. Oh, the total cost of this is $95.99.

2. This stupid apron with a dumb pun

“Eggs-pert” is a really stupid pun and teaches kids to spell poorly and make bad jokes. Now your kid is barely literate and not even a little bit funny, and what’s the point of resurrection if your kid can’t read all the hilarious Bible stories like Leviticus.

3. This historically confusing Joseph costume

I consulted with my Catholic mother, who confirmed that Joseph was not present at the death or resurrection of Jesus. He was present at the Nativity, which was Jesus’ first birthday. This is basically like having a birthday party at a funeral, which is only okay if the funeral coincides with some idiots’ birthday, who insisted on being celebrated at someone else’s funeral. If you can’t have your funeral all to yourself, what can you have?

4. This girls’ outfit designed by the world’s most boring amateur seamstress

I would never put my kid in this outfit unless she was dressing up as Laura Ingalls Wilder, because I’m a really loving person with a moral compass. This is Duggar lingerie, if I’m understanding their whole courting thing correctly. I guess it works for the Duggars, since that Duggar matriarch has had intercourse at least 20 times.

5. This vintage ensemble

For the future Motherboy attendee. The mom will dress like a suffragette, and they’ll dance the Charleston in a hotel convention room.

6. These glasses

jesus is the reason for the season — Photo: Oriental Trading

I don’t object to the religious nature of these, although the whole “Jesus is the reason for the seaons” pisses me off as someone who loves all holidays without having much love for Jesus. Either way, I’d never put my kids in these ridiculous glasses, even if I were trying to raise them with Christianity. I’m not really sure about the connection between silly glasses and religion is, but I decided to go to the expert. Dispatch from my Easter-celebrating mother: “Why would you have cardboard in the glasses with nothing in the eyeholes? That’s what I want to know.”

7. This horrifying face mask

NOT IN MY HOUSE.

8. This embellished diaper DIY

You know your kid would just shit all over that, right? I mean quite literally, that diaper you would work tirelessly on to embellish would just be a decorated poop carrier.

9. This chauvinist-in-training shirt