Reminiscing Easters Past

by Deanna

With Holy Week beginning this weekend on Palm Sunday, I am reminiscing on Easters past.  When my children were small, Easter was always centered around coloring Easter Eggs on Saturday night, waiting for them to go to bed and then trying to find unique hiding places for the following morning Easter Egg hunts in the house.  Ever since the kids were little we have lived in the Midwest, first in the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area, then for the last 30 plus years in the Chicago area. Neither locations are known to have warm, spring days to welcome Easter Sunday.  So the hunts were always held indoors.  Believe me you have to get pretty inventive year to year to find new hiding places for those brightly colored eggs in a small town-house.  It was not uncommon for an egg or two to have cracked before the end of the hunt.  The delight on my children’s faces upon discovering a hidden egg was always priceless and ofcourse there was always a race to see who could find the most. 

Easter was always a dress-up affair…all of us with new duds to wear, my daughter in a new dress, (usually hand-made by me) with hat & gloves, my son in an ill-fitting suit (pants and sleeves always seemed to be too long), with both usually wearing their "getting too small and dirty winter coats", my husband in probably a new shirt & tie and I always managed a new dress.  After church came the picture taking, then immediately after off went the new duds quickly replaced by comfortable clothes and shoes. Later we gathered around the dinner table for our Easter dinner. Most everything stayed the same over the years.  And then we moved to the Chicago area, the children began to grow up and sometime over those early years here we stopped coloring Easter Eggs which meant no more hunts the next morning.  The children decided there was no way they were wearing hand-made clothes on Easter, but one thing remained and that was our being together for church and spending the day together as a family.

As the years passed, and the kids grew into adults, they moved away, got married, began to have their own children and their own Easter traditions.  Many remained the same, coloring Easter eggs, the hunt in the morning, the new duds, attending church on Easter Sunday and spending time together as a family.   But now even the grand-kids are scattered and some will not even be home for Easter beginning another era of Easter traditions.  One is married and will be celebrating Easter with his wife’s family, one may have to stay at school due to commitments, another may be working.

This year Easter will be a quiet affair, no coloring of Easter Eggs, no hunt, probably no new duds.  Add a few more years and the grandkids will all be married and have children of their own, beginning the Easter traditions of the next generation all over again.  Some things change, but some remain the same. There will probably always be the coloring of Easter eggs, the hunt the next morning, the new duds, the church services and family dinners...there are some traditions that time never changes along with plenty of egg salad sandwiches for days the week after Easter.