As everything from church services to yoga classes move online in accordance with Gov. Charlie Baker’s stay-at-home advisory, Easter celebrations have proven to be no exception.
While the Montague Parks & Recreation Department has morphed what would have been its 15th annual Peter Cottontail’s EGGstravaganza into a “socially distant drive-by tour,” the WHAI and Bear Country radio stations — which usually host a massive Easter egg hunt at Greenfield Community College — and Greenfield Recreation Department are providing residents with a new way to search for eggs.
Instead of hundreds of children hunting for eggs in a mad dash across the college’s fields, children can now take part in a virtual Easter egg hunt on WHAI’s website through Sunday. Each time they find one and click on it, they’ll be taken to an entry page for prizes, according to the website’s contest description. The entry page will ask for an email address by which to notify winners of their prizes, and the child’s name. Families with more than one child searching for eggs will need to use different email addresses.
“Our plan is to offer at least one prize to every child who plays, most getting a goody bag of candy,” the website states. “But there are larger prizes as well, and they will be awarded through random drawings of all entries received.”
According to the website, winners will be drawn and notified on Monday. Winners will be expected to pick up their prizes in the radio station parking lot, but the date and time to do so has yet to be determined.
Alternatively, residents can hunt for colored paper eggs displayed in windows as part of an activity organized by the Greenfield Recreation Department.
Greenfield Recreation Director Christy Moore said she recognizes how much the community has enjoyed the teddy bear hunt organized by Heidi Shattuck, through which residents are encouraged to drive around to see the teddy bear displays created by their neighbors, and she wanted to do a similar Easter-themed activity.
“We produce lots of community events, and we wanted to bring some joy in these times of fear and anxiety,” she said.
Moore posted a picture of an egg on the Recreation Department’s Facebook page on Wednesday, which can be printed out and colored. There’s also a link on the page whereby participants can add their displayed eggs to a map for others to find.
As of Thursday afternoon, Moore said about 20 people had marked their eggs’ locations on the map, with some families coloring multiple eggs. She noted there are six in the windows at the John Zon Community Center, which is currently being used as the city’s Emergency Operations Center.
“People are looking for creative and fun things to do while maintaining social distancing,” Moore said, noting the activity’s immediate popularity. “Life is still happening, just in a different way right now.”
Social distancing precautions also mean that Peter Cottontail won’t be interacting with children in Montague as he usually does at this time of year, but that won’t stop him from waving to residents as he cruises through Montague’s five villages on Saturday morning.
According to a post on the Montague Parks & Recreation Department’s Facebook page, the Easter icon will ride in his “special Cottontail-mobile” from roughly 10 to 11 a.m. The full drive-by tour route, which begins and ends on Second Street, can be found on the Facebook page.
Montague Parks & Recreation Director Jon Dobosz said that while his department still plans to hold the EGGstravaganza at some point in the summer, his staff still wanted to help residents celebrate Easter now.
“For lack of a better term, we’re sitting on 5,000 eggs. We don’t want to continue to sit on them for another year,” Dobosz said of postponing EGGstravaganza. “At the same time, we recognize that we really do need to do something else during this time. We can’t let this weekend and the spirit of the season, so to speak, come and go without doing anything.”
Dobosz said the cruise around town will allow Peter Cottontail to see as many people as possible through the sunroof of a car. He expects people will line up outside or in their vehicles along the tour route, but asks that people continue to practice social distancing.
Residents will likely hear sirens before they see Peter Cottontail, as the Montague Police and Fire departments have agreed to provide an escort for at least a portion of Saturday’s route.
Reach Shelby Ashline at 413-772-0261, ext. 270 or sashline@recorder.com.