Happy Easter!

Today is Easter Sunday and Christians the world over are celebrating the risen Christ. Oh, how I remember this day well from my youth. Not so much for the religious significance but the pomp and circumstance surrounding it. Spending the week prior finding the right dress, purchasing white patent leather shoes, getting Shirley Temple curls in my hair, dyeing eggs the night before, Easter egg hunts at church - the memories go on and on. I would bet many of you have just as many wonderful memories as I do.

As I aged, Easter was still a time of buying a new outfit but it also signaled the arrival of spring and being able to finally wear white clothes. Although the egg hunts were a think of the past, I still loved dyeing eggs the Saturday night before Easter. Our Easter dinner was the stuff of legends with a great big honey blazed ham holding court in the center of the dinner table. After stuffing ourselves, our evening culminated in watching Charleston Heston , in perhaps his greatest role, play Moses in Cecil B. DeMilles’ greatest film The Ten Commandments.

As a church going adult, I found that I enjoyed the pomp and circumstance surrounding Easter even more since our church added a part of the Jewish celebration of Passover to the mix.

Passover is celebrated by Jews worldwide. The story of Passover is found in the Old Testament book of Exodus in the Bible. After suffering from various plagues, Moses told Pharaoh that the next plague would be one he himself would declare. Pharaoh ordered the death of the firstborn in each house. Only houses where the doorposts were smeared with the blood of an unblemished lamb was the firstborn spared. Hence the term "Passover."
The meal that marks the beginning of Passover is called a Seder service." There is a retelling of the story of the Jews exodus from Egypt and some symbolic foods are eaten representing both the slavery and eventual freedom experienced by the Jews. The meal consists of eating matzo (an unleavened bread representing poverty), bitter herbs (representing the bitterness of slavery)and a sweet paste (representing the mortar that was used to cement bricks). During the second half of the meal, matzo is eaten again along with vegetables dipped in salt water (representing bitter tears) and wine. It should be remembered this is the meal eaten by Jesus the night he was betrayed and memorialized as the Last Supper. The partaking of bread and wine is known as Communion in the Christian church.

At my home church, we held a Maundy Thursday potluck after our service where we washed each other’s feet. Prior to the potluck, we had a Seder service and I always felt it was a wonderful way to connect the Old and New Testament and connect Christianity and Judaism.

Eventually my church stopped the combined Passover/Maundy Thursday celebration and I stopped going to church. We don’t have a traditional Easter meal anymore. But I still watch the Easter time movies like King of Kings, The Robe, Barabbas, Ben-Hur, Easter Parade and Jesus Christ Superstar. Many of these movies I watched since I was a child and they are just as great now as they were then. The memories are as clear as the sky is today. They take me back to a time when the biggest decision I had to make was whether or not to wear lace socks or tights.

I can’t promise that I will never attend church on an Easter Sunday. I certainly can’t promise that I’ll never make another Easter ham. But I can promise that I will celebrate Easter in my own way, eating dyed eggs and chocolate bunnies till I burst.

Happy Easter!