Wednesday Rambling:  Easter Memories

Wednesday Rambling: Easter Memories

 


I've been listening to people discuss Easter for the last couple of weeks now.  I've been astonished at the toy sales going on.  I've looked in vain for the Easter outfits.  I've been amazed at the count of eggs being used in egg hunts.  

I miss the Easter of my childhood.

I'm not saying it was less expensive to 'do' Easter 50-60 years ago. I don't see how it can have been.  Easter marked a change of season and that meant a new Sunday dress, shoes, perhaps a new purse, and possibly a hat.  For the males of the family, there were new dress pants and suits, shoes, shirts and ties.  

But we got mileage from those things!  Oh yes, those Easter outfits did duty until Fall when we got a new outfit each.  These were saved for Sundays and if you were a child, heaven help you, don't have a huge growth spurt!  I've worn many a too small shoe and too snug dress with a visible hem line where Mama had let down the hem after a growth spurt, trying to hang on until Fall, lol.

I miss the lovely dresses of dotted Swiss, or eyelet, or checked gingham with nylon net slips and I miss the white straw purses, the white patent shoes, the lace edged socks.   I miss seeing men in suits and ties for church.  

I miss Peter Cottontail.  No one ever speaks of Peter Cottontail anymore. My grandchildren were shocked when I sang the song.  They had never heard it!

Easter baskets were simple.  Perhaps a coloring book, a chocolate rabbit.  Sometimes it was only a Chocolate Rabbit.  We always hoped it would be a solid rabbit but often it was a hollow one.

Does anyone remember the decorated sugar eggs?  My fourth-grade teacher's neighbor made them and she'd bring them into school to show off.  They were just lovely!  Molded white sugar with a diorama inside of tiny flowers, tiny rabbits, tiny houses.

What fun we had dyeing hardboiled eggs.  We used food coloring and vinegar and we did attempt to mix colors.  Granny usually limited us to two or three dozen for the seven of us grandchildren.  And goodness no egg better land in the mounds of creeping Phlox, lol, while being hidden because there they stayed.

Even egg hunts were simple.  Well hidden, sometimes so much so that we'd find an egg much later in the year.  We often had those brightly colored marshmallow filled eggs that are nothing but sugar inside and out really and our hard boiled eggs.  Perhaps Granny might have a few malted milk Robin's Eggs in a candy dish inside.  But egg hunts weren't fussy back then.

Our own church is hosting an egg hunt and they filled 35,000 plastic eggs for the hunt on Saturday.  

It was a lovely simpler time.  

(C) Terri Cheney
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