Easter Tradition

As a young girl growing up in Brooklyn, N.Y., I always got new clothes for Easter. The night before, we bathed and shampooed. Mom wrapped my long brown hair around strips of cloth to make corkscrew curls a la Shirley Temple. On Easter morning, everything I put on, from my clean skin out, was new…underwear, socks, shoes, dress, coat and hat. I never gave much thought to why…we just did this every year.

Since I attended Catholic school, we children had to go to nine o’clock mass. The church flickered and shone from the scores of lighted candles.  We all looked so fresh and sparkling in our new clothes and sang the Easter hymns with gusto. Alleluia, Alleluia.

            After church my family engaged in hunting for Easter goodies. Mom gave me an empty basket with green mossy stuff and I filled it with the colored eggs, jelly beans, yellow marshmallow chicks and chocolate bunnies I gathered from their hiding places.

            “Don’t eat any until after dinner, or you’ll spoil your appetite,” Mom warned.

            “Aw Mom, pleeease.”

            “Okay, but just one.”

            Of course one is never enough. I ate as many as I could without getting caught.

We had dinner at one o’clock.  The aroma of baked ham with sweet pineapple, cloves and brown sugar glaze filled the apartment. The bone and leftover meat would make a hearty pea soup later in the week. Mom covered the dining room table with a lace tablecloth and used her good china and silverware for the occasion. A bowl of colored hard boiled eggs sat in the center of the table. Linen napkins replaced our usual paper ones and she tucked one under my chin to protect my Easter finery.

Later in the afternoon, , we finally got out of our new clothes and into something more comfortable. For supper we ate cold ham and cheese sandwiches with Gulden’s mustard. Mom always bought potato salad from the German deli and she added a couple of chopped eggs. Some food coloring had seeped through cracks in the shells onto the whites and looked like confetti in the potato salad. Sliced tomatoes served with mayo completed the meal.

As I now think back to those pristine Easter outfits, I realize that part of the reason for them had to do with reaffirmation of the continuance of life.  Just as Easter mornings saw green buds peeking out from the barren branches of winter trees, we also felt renewed both physically and spiritually.