Easter Reflections

In early childhood, while I still believed in the Easter Bunny but simultaneously understood that the holiday was really about Christ dying on the cross, I remember making this startling and confusing revelation:

If Christmas is about Christ's birth, and Easter is about his death, there isn't enough time between these holidays for him to grow up!  I mean, how can he be a baby in a manger one minute, and then--not even a whole year later (my math wasn't that good)--a semi-naked, full-grown, man on a cross?

I didn't get it, but I didn't dare ask anyone, because whenever I did ask such questions, I always got angrily snapped at.  For example, I had once asked an adult the following:

If Jesus died on the cross so that people could go to Heaven after they died, what happened to all of the people who lived and died before Jesus came along?  Did they all go to hell?  I mean, there must have been several thousand (again, the math) people in that situation.  Like the cavemen, for instance.

The only details I remember about the adult I asked were her nasal voice and jet-black "Dear Abby"/"Ann Landers" (identical advice columnists) hairdo.  She had to think for a really long time.  She had to think so hard, that the bees in her quasi-beehive must have become agitated.   Finally, she said something like, "God made a special exception for them....

...and cavemen don't count."  

Then she stormed off to the liquor cabinet.  I think it was a friend's mother.  We didn't have a liquor cabinet.  We had a refrigerator jam-packed full of beer so that that there was barely enough room for real food.  Like Jello salad with marshmallows.