By Thea Jarvis

If Lent is just around the corner, Easter can’t be far away.

Enter the traditional chorus of consumer goodies – chocolate bunnies, painted eggs, marshmallow chicks, and foil-wrapped fuzzies.

Following close behind, the Easter parade – a retail salesperson’s dream of fabulous fashionata: shiny shoes, frilly pastel dresses, crisp new suits, jauntily-strawed hats.

In the distance stands the weary consumer. Another Christian holiday finds him care-worn and fretful. He faces financial instability from pressure to buy everything in sight and psychological distress from his desperate attempts to keep in step with what has become the traditional way to celebrate American holidays (and holy days).

This year, according to a recent survey conducted by Alternatives, a resource center in Forest Park that works for simpler lifestyles through alternative celebrations, Americans can look forward to spending approximately $550 million on Easter candy, $8 million on Easter flowers, $90 million on Easter greeting cards, and $1 billion on Easter clothing.

Is there a better way?

Milo Shannon-Thornbery, an ordained Methodist minister and executive director of Alternatives, thinks there is. He and his small, dedicated staff work toward attaining substantial goals through the Alternatives network, a national organization with a “grass roots” look.

By 1985, they look forward to seeing at least 500,000 persons simplify their celebrations and their lifestyles in general; at least 1,000 religious congregations with an institutional lifestyle characterized by simplicity and identification with the poor and oppressed; and at least $100 million diverted from over-consumption to the justice programs of the churches and related agencies.

“We tell our children the story of the Easter bunny with the same sense of truth we tell them about the Resurrection,” said Shannon-Thornberry at the corporate headquarters of the eight-year-old organization, just off Main Street in Forest Park.

“They grow up and find out the truth about the bunny – how do they deal with this central element of their Christian faith?” For openers, the tall and bearded Shannon-Thornberry, in his 1981 Alternatives Planning Calendar, suggests that “an alternative Easter will avoid…commercial trappings and focus on the victory of Christ over death and the forces of evil, and not what we can enjoy when Lent is over or what the Easter Bunny has brought.”

He continues that such a celebration “will include renewed commitment to the ministry of Jesus, a ministry to which all Christians are called.”

Milo Shannon-Thornberry, his wife, Coleen, and their children practice what they preach. On their three-acre farm in Ellenwood, just six miles due east of Forest Park, alternative celebrations are year-round events.

Last October, their four children, aged nine, 10, 11 and 13, were treated to a unique All Hallow’s Eve.

“Each of the children invited a friend, and before the part, I secretly assigned each child a hero or heroine,” recalls Shannon-Thornberry. “In order to be admitted to the celebration, each child had to come dressed as the person assigned – Florence Nightingale, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, or whoever – and be prepared to know something about that person. We played charades and guessed the characters, and the party was a real success!”

The Alternatives principle followed by the Shannon-Thornberry is no fly-by-night scheme, hatched by a radical minority seeking to undermine traditional values. It is, rather, a mainstream effort to get back to basics.

Founded in 1973 by Bob Kochtilzky, a classmate of Milo Shannon-Thornberry at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology, Alternatives began as a protest against the commercialism of Christmas.

It has now grown to the point that its present efforts include “presenting issues in a way that will encourage people to look at their own lives, their society, and their environment and get a sense of respect for their own life, for the people on the planet, and for the planet itself,” according to Shannon-Thornberry.

A quarterly newsletter, subscribed to by well-known Catholic institutions like Marquette University in Wisconsin and Notre Dame University in Indiana, is but one of the publications of the non-profit organization known as Alternatives.

Other resources include the Celebrations Planning Calendar and the Alternative Celebrations Catalogue, now in its fourth edition, in which Catholic Relief Services, the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and the United Farm Workers are included among the many organizations suggested as legitimate and worthwhile charities to which funds saved by consuming less might be diverted.

All of these publications, as well as an impressive selection of books and materials geared for simple living, are available at the Alternatives center in Forest Park.

The Alternatives Resource Center may well be a hub for those seeking to achieve a simpler lifestyle by winding down consumption and moving toward a more creative approach to life and its celebrations.

It is certainly a good place to start.