Easter
I have some fairly consistent memories of Easter growing up that might be common to others of my generation. There was the custard bowls full of warm water and fizzy tablets that made the water (and our fingers) bright yellow, pink and dark purple. There was the tangy smell of vinegar that accompanied the first few forays into compulsive egg dipping including stripes and the elusive polka dots. And then the soaked cardboard egg carton that held the remaining 12 dozen or so eggs that mom had felt we needed. These of course, ended up in lighter and lighter shades of single-colored pastels.
There was the requisite sunrise service that for us was sadly held by a church that believed sunrise was when the sun actually came up. (I always envied the non-denominational church down the street that seemed to think sunrise was at a much more civil 9 AM). This led to the strange realization that it was only 10 in the morning and we had already consumed two meals as well as several pounds of chocolate.
Then there was the Easter egg hunt. In my day it actually included some level of challenge with eggs hidden 14 feet up in trees, in the sub-basement of the church, and in the tailpipes of neighbor cars. And then since these were real eggs there was the frantic search for the unfound 6 eggs to fill the empty dye-stained eggcups sitting on the table. There were also a few years where we found more than we had intended and answered the question of the missing eggs from the year before (ick).
Then there were the things that were probably semi-unique to my family. One year my creative (read compulsive) parents decided to blow out raw eggs and then use actual paints to illustrate each egg with a character from The Lord of the Rings. This was, of course, before The Lord of the Rings was insanely popular. In fact no one on my block could figure out what the Gollum egg looked like (an oval salamander) or why one egg had a long flowing white beard.
We also woke to the strange mix of Easter dresses for the sunrise service to celebrate the end of Lent and the communal family Easter basket lorded over by a very large (and very disappointing) carob Easter bunny. Somehow religion, mid-70’s hippy-ness and good ol’ American “chocolate” bunny Easter mixed to create something that would confuse even the best executive at Hallmark.
This all contrasts in some way to what has become the common Easter experience for my children. Somehow actually coloring real eggs has graduated to buying large bags of plastic eggs to be filled with candy and really cheap little things. The few public Easter egg hunts that my kids have experienced have been more like a demonstration of massive plastic egg gathering.
The art of hiding eggs seems to have been lost to the political correctness of “each child gets the exact same amount of loot as the next”. This of course means setting plastic eggs out in even 1 foot by 1 foot rows across a football field, holding a swarm of kids back behind a rope so they can all be let loose at the same time, and then chasing them across the field with a swarm of video camera armed parents trying to capture each egg being scooped up and tossed into a plastic bucket.
My kids do know the massive event of Easter mass, giving them a chance to meet an entire congregation of parishioners they have never met before. I haven’t dragged my kids out of bed at 5 AM but they are still young, it could still happen. My kids do appreciate the end of Lent so they can take up whatever they gave up at the start.
All in all this year’s Easter was a special time. Our family is a common blend of disparate backgrounds and experiences that combine together to create something new. The candy will dwindle in our home over time. We will actually go back to liking chocolate again in a few weeks. And we will pick the last chard of plastic egg from the bottom of our shoes at some point in the next few weeks.