Gen X Musings
By Patricia Racine
May 2026
There was a photo that went viral in April of a mall Easter Bunny sitting alone, dejected in a dying mall and it cut right to the hearts of those of us who remember the annual photo trip to see the bunny. For me, as a Generation X member, it wasn’t an image that I felt the urge to mock, as is our generational way, but it hurt because it felt like a nail in the coffin of what made our childhood special.
The older I get the more I see the quiet extinction of the traditions I grew up with and now realize were the glue that held our family together. And even though the digital age that we are living in makes life so much more convenient, the simplicity of our childhood is being left behind because it is considered inconvenient. My nephew tweaks out if he has to watch TV with commercials, whereas I remember using that time to dash to the kitchen for a drink. But then again, we will also drive 20 to 30 minutes to pick up a few groceries while out of towners think that’s ridiculous.
My generation also grew up with “third places,” the spaces outside of work and home where you interacted with strangers and the community. Those were the days when you were dropped off for a few hours to cruise the mall or the town put on parades and picnics for summer holidays that everyone went to and socialized. These days online shopping is killing the communal mall, kids can barely speak to a cashier or waitress, and DoorDash is making it too easy to become a shut-in. We are losing the accidental togetherness that goes along with waiting in line with lots of other families for the Easter Bunny photo shoot.
Too often traditions of the '70s and '80s are labeled as “too difficult” to sustain; but therapists are coming out suggesting that the effort we used to put into upholding those traditions is what solidified our families. As kids we had weekly dinners at my dad’s restaurant with him because he couldn’t make it home to eat with us regularly and Sundays were reserved for church and then dinner with the whole family at my grandparents’ house. These things made for families that could laugh, bond and actually talk to each other instead of just being a group of people co-habiting a house and sharing a wi-fi password. I did have a few kids who worked for me who needed Sunday nights off for family dinners; though it made scheduling hard I now see the importance of what they were doing. I know that I think an awful lot about moving closer to my sister because I want to spend more time with the family; and living in northern Vermont won’t be terrible.
That viral sad Easter Bunny is hitting me so hard because it represents the end of the special shared experiences of my childhood, when every kid in town was also in line with you to see the slightly creepy rabbit. These days we are personalizing our lives to the point of isolation, we curate our own content, schedules and traditions to meet our personal needs and call out to things that seem inconvenient or a little stressful to us.
I’m not yearning completely for that simple time, I mean I love the high speed internet at the house, and online shopping is great for when I forgot something downtown; but we should keep in the back of our minds that convenience is the enemy of connection. To save our family unit we made drastic changes and now can do things together with everyone in the pictures. A tradition doesn’t need to be perfect, to be powerful; it just has to be yours. And maybe if we become more aware of familial traditions, we will also make more time for neighborhood and community activities too.
