More Than Eggs
Today begins a three-day weekend in the Christian faith that gives us all hope. It also brings about certain questions that are still really hard to answer.
How can today be called “Good Friday” when it involved the most horrendous death of crucifixion on a rugged cross? This was after being beaten and forced to drag His own cross up Calvary. How can that be good?
After tomorrow’s day in the tomb, we finally get to celebrate the great day called Easter. It’s a day of hope, grace and self-reflection to do better in all walks of life. It makes us all ask the simple question: why would anyone suffer and give of Himself for me and you? I don’t know why but I will forever be thankful.
Easter stirs up memories that can never be taken away. It involves more than eggs.
On Easter of 1961, Bob and I were baptized by Burl Oliver at Leighton Methodist Church. It was one of the first times that all five members of our family sat on the same oak pew. For that, I cherish that memory.
Daddy was tougher than a pool- room steak and had the mentality that a smile/grin or any example that he was having fun was a sign of weakness (outside of coaching baseball). Except on Easter. He actually enjoyed watching us look for eggs and would help my sister since she was the youngest.
Before Easter, we would go to Felton’s Supply Store and buy some egg dye for the eggs. These were the days before hens and rabbits were laying hollow plastic eggs. We spent hours dying eggs for the hunt and found that you could make designs by drawing on the eggs with a candle before placing them in the vinegar and dye. We were doing tie-dye on eggs, long before San Francisco hippies started using the same design on t-shirts.
We alternated between hiding and hunting. Anyone else remember hiding the “golden egg?” It was either painted gold or was actually a goose egg which was larger than the chicken eggs. To this day, most of us keenagers still can’t explain the connection between eggs, rabbits and baby chicks. I think it has to do with new birth.
Sitting here musing about Easter and this kept coming to mind:
Matching homemade dresses for mother and daughter including bonnets. Yellow, white or pink. How many daughters today would pay big money just to hold that awful looking dress that their mother or grandmother sewed on for hours? Clip-on ties for the boys and the smell of shoe polish.
Proud to put the dime in the collection plate that your dad gave you before church. Easter lunch in Town Creek with aunts, uncles and cousins you only saw once a year. Egg hunts took on a different challenge when competing with long lost cousins. This meant getting irate when their parents helped them hunt while the rest of us were on our own. Aunt Berta always hid one egg under the fake grass in your basket.
Today, kids reach for their phones to stay busy when they get bored. We reached for our baseball gloves and baseballs and would play pitch in the side yard, pasture or driveway. Just anywhere that didn’t have a glass which could be broken. We begged to get out of our “Easter best” and put on something we could throw in.
Seeing people at church which hadn’t been through the doors since Christmas. It didn’t matter; they were in the building. Also, sharing a pew with a farmer, all dressed up, who hadn’t worn anything but overalls since he was tall enough to hold up the galluses. When you grew up around dirt farmers, it was often a shock seeing them in a different outfit, without the John Deere cap.
Fried chicken, pot roast, fresh corn, peas, maters, squash, okra, onions, pear salad, butterbeans, rice and gravy with Southern cornbread that would make your tongue slap your brain out. Tea sweet enough to send you into a diabetic coma. Aunts standing over you at the Easter meal, piling more and more on your plate since she suspected your having worms since you weren’t gaining enough weight.
In the South, food meant family, fellowship and staying connected. Especially at Easter.
Easter Sunday means the end of Lent. Each year, I give up a few things as a small sacrifice for remembrance. Sunday, I get to enjoy potatoes, rice, sugar, sweets, and bread for the first time since Ash Wednesday. Bread was the hardest for me. I also get to celebrate meeting my goal of losing 12 pounds.
There’s an old bluegrass tune that has nothing to do with Easter: “Cut the Cornbread Mama Cause Company’s Coming.”
I will be humming that, waiting on Easter lunch, while we sing every Easter hymn.
Happy Easter.
“He’s Alive!”