I love Easter weekend! When I was kid, growing up in central Florida, Easter was one of the most anticipated holidays at my house. My parents, being strict Catholics, always emphasized the importance of the holiday over all the other religious holidays and made a huge deal of the entire weekend.
As a kid, the best part of Easter was that Lent was over. We didn't have to go to church on Fridays for Stations of the Cross and we could eat meat again any time we wanted. Plus, we could resume eating/doing whatever it was we'd "given up" for Lent.
One Lent I gave up chocolate and candy of any kind. Pretty tough for an 8 year-old. That Easter Sunday I woke up and promptly gorged on all the goodies in my Easter basket. I remember feeling sick all during Easter mass and vowed I'd never give up candy again. After all, if I hadn't deprived myself, then I wouldn't have felt the need to overindulge, right? (at least that kind of logic seemed to work for me at that age!).
What are you fondest Easter memories?
I don't miss the tight elastic strings on the hats... But I wish I could still eat all that candy without gaining 10 pounds.
ReplyDeleteI'm an atheist, but as a child was raised in a Russian Orthodox church (like Greek Orthodox, lots of similarities to Catholic) and we had a different calendar for all major holidays which was interesting,
ReplyDeleteAt Russian Easter (generally all our holidays were a week or two after the "American" ones), we went to a midnight mass where at one point we walked around the church three times (and, we all know why it was "three") with lit candles, chanting/singing and then at the end we lined up with our fast-breaking baskets full of traditional Easter foods (dyed eggs, fried sausages, and those raisin breads baked in coffee cans to be tall and rounded at the top, called bulichka) for a blessing and then home you went.
Almost all the young kids would get too sleepy and cranky during mass so eventually parents would tuck their kids into the backs of big old 1960's Chevy's and Buick's and we'd sleep in chilly cars in the lot, fogging up the windows. As a kid all that pageantry was fun because things like being up until 2a, outside in the dark, playing with candles, and sleeping in the car were, generally speaking, frowned upon or forbidden all the rest of the year!
Of getting a new pretty dress with the patent leather mary janes and my Easter hat with our baskets before heading off to church.
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