We do, and I don’t know why it bugs me so much. I’ll spoiler this so as not to ruin the mood for those of you who like Easter, 'cause it’s more of a mini-rant.
I hate Easter. It reminds me of the creepiest cannibalistic zombie worshiping aspects of Catholocism. None of us are Christian, much less Catholic, but every year there’s the dress buying and the egg dying and the basket choosing and the dinner full of traditional foods that nobody actually likes… This year, my daughter added a new going-to-be-a-tradition, where (after she’s found the eggs in the morning that “the easter bunny” hid for her around the house) she rehides the eggs, and between dinner and desert, the adults have to hunt for the eggs.
What I found most disturbing this year, though, was that my mother had my daughter present me with an orchid corsage. That was my grandmother’s thing; we always bought an orchid for Grandma. No. Just…no. I’m not taking the place of my dead grandmother on this pseudo holiday crapfest.
I can get behind Secular Christmas. But Easter still feels to me like a Christian holiday (ironically, I know, with all those pagan symbols) and I hate that we do it. I spent as much time as possible napping and surfing on the internet yesterday, only to be pulled away to cut motherfucking crosses in the dinner rolls. CROSSES?! Seriously? MOM, I’M LITERALLY A PAGAN!!!
Somebody’s uninvited dog always eats something. This year it was the chex mix on a high counter and the niece’s toys. As usual the owners thought nothing of it and laughed it off. This dog of course never does this. Except it always does this every time brought. It is not Ham Dog of which I speak as Ham Dog is on the verge of old age death. This is the new large untrained dog of a different relative that terrorizes the child of Ham Dog’s owner.
When I was little I got new Easter dress, matching straw hat with a ribbon, new shoes.
The works for us girls.
It was one of the few days my mother went to church with us, mostly to show off her new clothes.
We always dyed eggs, but we never searched for them
The entire basket was hidden, usually behind the couch.
When I was real little, before my grandmother died, we’d go to her house for Easter dinner.
After she died my mother took over all the traditional stuff.
Ham, potato salad, pickled eggs, pickled beets, home made cheese (which had been hanging in a cheese cloth over the wash tub in the basement, bread, I’m probably forgetting something. Oh yeah, l
kielbasa.
Now its down to ham and potato salad because nobody liked the other stuff except my father. Since he died there’s not much sense in making it if nobody is going to eat it.
I remember all the foods had some symbolic meaning but the only one I can remember is the horseradish is supposed to remind you of the bitterness of life - or something like that.
When my son was younger we’d dye eggs.
I’d hide the eggs on Easter morning and he’d look for them. Then he’d hide them and I’d look for them. Then I’d have to hide them again so he could look for them. Then he’d hide them again so I could look for them. Over and over and over because that is what he liked to do.
Since he wasn’t too into candy his basket usually had toys and stuff in it. I never hid it, just put it right in the middle of the table.
Now whoever is around gets together for Easter lunch and then everybody runs off in their separate directions for Easter dinner.
I think everybody else goes to church.
My son and I don’t because we don’t see the point.
We have an egg hunt with chocolate mini eggs of whatever variety comes in wrappers, because there’s always a few that don’t get found. As the years go on and my brothers (who are in their 40s) lose interest and abandon the search earlier and earlier, one learns to look carefully at the egg, maybe give it a sniff after unwrapping, to make sure it’s actually this year’s. My mother hides these eggs after the Easter Vigil, and the most excited person every Easter morning is my father, who loves the hunt. Then boiled eggs for breakfast (often decorated to look like the person who’s going to eat them - which seems weirder now that I’ve written it down) and a full-sized chocolate egg on the breakfast table for each person. Big lunch, almost always roast lamb, then a walk, tea and Easter cake, then sit about groaning until you can cram down a cold meat sandwich in the evening.
The first Easter egg is always hidden in the kid’s shoes. (Amusingly, that one was the last Easter egg my three-year-old nephew found this year; he has obviously not become acclimated to the tradition yet :))
When my brother and I were younger, our aging next-door neighbors, whose kids had all grown up and moved out, used to set up an egg hunt (plastic eggs with toys) for us in the small patch of woods between our houses. It was a lot of fun. Then my parents would do a separate one in the house with the little chocolate eggs.
We each got to pick out a new stuffed animal ahead of time that would be delivered with the Easter basket. As we got older, this turned into Gameboy games. sigh
Now, the extent of Easter is driving around on Sunday and wondering why Chipotle is closed. “Wait, is today Easter? Oh.”
For a few years in my early adolescence we’d go to the sunrise service at the Cathedral of the Pines, but it meant getting up at around 3 AM for the drive. Unsurprisingly, it was not a tradition that lasted very long. Other than that, the usual basket of goodies and Easter-themed toys.
Our Eater tradition was staring at the beautiful tray of decorated Easter cookies stashed in the basement that our elderly neighbor gave us each year, usually smack in the middle of Passover.
We usually listen to Jesus Christ Superstar or - as my wife refers to it - the gospel according to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
My daughter and her husband came over for dinner, and she said, “Happy zombie jesus day!”
And WhyNot - why not focus on the sex and seasonal change aspect? May Day, the equinox, and all that. All them lambs, eggs, and flowers are all albout fertility and fucking, not the jesus myth. Same as with x-mas, it ain’t as tho folk weren’t having spring celebrations long before the Christians decided to co-opt them.
