So there is this nice Jewish girl at work, let’s call her Sharon.
So she is dating a nice non-Jewish boy.
So this year, they celebrated Passover together, and Sunday she is cooking a traditional Easter dinner at her house.
Sharon has two young sons and, in the spirit of multi-culture traditions, thought it would be fun to hide Easter eggs in the backyard for them to find.
Another co-worker here said, “No…you should have an egg roll in the backyard instead.”
Sharon seemed a little confused and said, “You’re supposed to hide eggrolls in the backyard?”
(Maybe you had to be there, but to envision her ordering Chinese takeout and hiding eggrolls behind the orleander trees just cracks me up…)
In some locales, instead of hiding individual eggs under bushes and in the branches of trees, they scatter eggs in the open on a lawn, especially across a hillside if available, (sometimes by rolling them down the hill), then line the little kids up at the top of the hill and letting them scramble for the eggs like a race.
The traditional Easter morning party at the White House had been an “egg roll” (prior to the current increased security).
(There’s two main ethnic branches of Judaism. Ashkenazim, the primary branch, are from Eastern Europe and among other practices don’t eat rice during Passover. Sephardim are from Spain and around the Mediterranean, and do eat rice during Passover. This explanation brought to you by the different pronounciations of Shabbat.)
I’ve never seen an egg roll either, and I grew up in a nice Christian (Catholic) household. But then again, I grew up in Minnesota, you hide eggs under the couch, not under bushes - as it is often still pretty Wintery here at Easter and no one really wants to hunt for eggs on brown grass with frost on the ground and flakes of snow drifting from the sky. And their don’t tend to me many hills in the average living room.
(I have seen eggrolls. But we don’t hide those outside here either.)
My wife would kill me if she knew I was telling this story online…but she’s not here, so I’m safe
Several years ago, when we were first married, we went over to my aunt and uncles house for Easter dinner. I guess, being raised as I was, difference in religious culture just don’t bother me. While I may not know what’s going on during Passover, it doesn’t bother me to ask, or go along with the flow.
So anyway. We’re at dinner, and there’s just tons of food. 2 kinds of ham, turkey, potatoes, casserole…lots to choose from. Afterwards, as we’re driving home I as my wife how she liked everything. She replied that it was great, but she wished she could have had some applesauce. I asked why she didn’t just help herself, and she told me that she thought the applesauce was…
Wait for it…
There for Jesus to eat.
I about ran the car off the road laughing so hard. Because she’s used to leaving a satire (I know I spelled that wrong, many apologies) plate, she thought that the bowl of applesauce was left out for Jesus. In all the rush of passing the food around, we just hadn’t gotten to it, so it just sat there.
The day before Easter we took the lazy way out and had pizza for dinner. I brought out the paper plates (if you’re going to be lazy, go all the way!) and found that I had one too many, so we put it at the unoccupied fourth chair.
“Who’s that for?” asked my five-year-old daughter.
“Elijah,” I answered, without a pause.
Pepper Mill cracked up, and my daughter was mightily confused. I’m ex-Catholic agnostic. Pepper was raised various varieties of Protestant, and we’re giving our daughter the benefit of our experience. So now she’s getting even more multicultural.
Reminds me of a story…
I was going to school with some Japanese exchange students. Just before we went on Easter Holiday, one of them approached me and asked what the story was with Easter. I gave her a quick synopsis, at which point she started laughing and laughing. When I asked her what was so funny, she explained that she had thought that we celebrated Easter because, “we were happy that we had finally killed that evil Jesus”.