Easter Memories
I love to make up Easter baskets. My mother used to do ones for us kids that were full of savories - small cheeses, pates or preserves paired with crackers - and then we were encouraged to contribute to the Easter lunch and try all of them. She also would make baskets for relatives and friends that were customized - one year she gave an antique marble birdbath to a friend that she loaded with cookware, spices and china. After a fight with her mother she made up by painted a cackling witch on an egg as a gift.
I remember visiting a friend of my mother's right before Easter and finding a lavish basket behind a chair. I assumed the basket was for one of her nephews, so let it alone. But she had created one for each of us and had created a ribbon labyrinth that led to each basket.
An elderly Hungarian lady from our church led us in a class in making traditional painted Easter eggs - blowing the egg out a hole in the shell and then coloring it with inks and crayons. She had a collection of about a hundred painted and decorated eggs, one of them an early work by Fabergé. She was wonderful - about four feet tall, used a cane, raven-black hair although she was pushing 90 and lived an actual rose-covered cottage that was out of a 19th century picture book.
There was always the huge Easter party thrown by our drama teacher at her ruined Gatsby Era estate on the North Shore. The Hell's Angels showed up and gave motorcycle rides to whomever lost the Easter Egg hunt. The annoying teenagers included Robert Downey Jr,. and Uma Thurman.
I'm alone this Easter by happenstance and made some baskets for a few friends who are also celebrating by themselves. Tea, honey candy, a bit of chocolate, little marzipan rabbits. I was surprised at how many good memories doing this brought back. I think I'll see if our local hospital has an Easter program for kids who are undergoing medical procedures and volunteer next year.
By the way, my childhood and subsequent life sucked/sucks. It just seems a lot of the bits that didn't were connected to Easter.
| by Anonymous | reply 29 | April 1, 2024 4:13 AM
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You might say you were encouraged to contribute.
| by Anonymous | reply 1 | March 31, 2024 3:54 AM
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That's quite the lovely story you wove for us there, OP. I'm a total atheist now, but I have similarly fond childhood memories of Easter. Joy comes so easily and naturally to us when we are children, regardless of circumstance.
| by Anonymous | reply 3 | March 31, 2024 4:16 AM
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R3, I have good and bad memories about Christmas and Thanksgiving - of the latter to the point that I would be happy never to celebrate it again.
Easter seems to have been a rare moment of actual peace for my family.
No idea why.
| by Anonymous | reply 4 | March 31, 2024 4:28 AM
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Easter was a big deal in our house, growing up. My mom was into art and we all got into dyeing the eggs. It was a serious activity. I think my mom boiled maybe 24 eggs, so not a crazy amount. One year, we had some oil-based dyes that made a swirly pattern. Another year, wax / batik was involved. Masking tape was always part of the tools.
| by Anonymous | reply 5 | March 31, 2024 4:42 AM
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Helping mom in the garden, weather permitting.
| by Anonymous | reply 6 | March 31, 2024 1:55 PM
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Easter is my favorite holiday, I think because it happens in Spring. Christmas always has this heaviness because of the cold and dark days (for those of us northern hemisphere people).
| by Anonymous | reply 7 | March 31, 2024 1:58 PM
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Everyone knows there’s nothing a kid loves more than a basket of pate. The magic of Easter.
| by Anonymous | reply 8 | March 31, 2024 2:02 PM
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[quote] Easter seems to have been a rare moment of actual peace for my family.
Maybe because it’s a lot less work for the adults. We generally had low-key holidays and my Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter memories are all good, but Easter seems different because the main expectation was a basket of store-bought candy. It’s also when the weather starts improving and days are longer.
I pronounce marzipan like the chef, not the kids. With the less emphasis on the middle syllable and a short i sound. Which is correct? Not sure I’ve actually said the word out loud, but want to be prepared.
What’s the stuff that is sometimes between the layers of petite fours and is like marzipan, but has a vague alcohol taste?
| by Anonymous | reply 9 | March 31, 2024 2:32 PM
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I’m giving me my Easter basket from the time I was old enough to walk through around age 12. Always filled with Fannie May chocolate bunnies (solid) and various Fannie May eggs. Some remembered Easter gifts through the years were a vinyl Cheryl Ladd - Cheryl Ladd album and a few yrs later a Sony Walkman.
| by Anonymous | reply 10 | March 31, 2024 2:39 PM
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R7 it’s not my fave holiday (mine is Christmas) but I share your sentiment about Easter .
| by Anonymous | reply 12 | March 31, 2024 2:41 PM
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OP, you know the hospital kids are going to want florescent plastic baskets with green plastic grass, right?
Can you use your creativity to create Easter baskets that fulfill the kids’ expectations and reflect your artistic vision? I don’t know why this made me think of the linked mural below. Maybe because the era it portrays is only a decade or two before my childhood Easters. I love this mural but I don’t know anything about art, so go ahead and make fun of me if my appreciation reveals my plebeian taste. Have a vague idea I want to learn something, so went to MOMA. Once.
| by Anonymous | reply 13 | March 31, 2024 2:42 PM
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Those children will just love basket filled with pâtés, cream cheese and fig roll ups, bacon-wrapped scallops and of course, crudités. And crisp breads of beetroot, goat’s cheese and pine nuts.
| by Anonymous | reply 14 | March 31, 2024 3:41 PM
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Does anyone remember those Easter eggs that were made of pure white sugar, with a little scene inside made from icing and more icing on the outside? I always got them in my Easter basket. It’s a wonder I still have all my teeth.
| by Anonymous | reply 15 | March 31, 2024 3:49 PM
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Growing up in Detroit area it was always Sanders Candy for Easter. The Crème Eggs in Pastel Colors and Brachs Jelly Beans. We always gave the black ones to the dog .
| by Anonymous | reply 16 | March 31, 2024 4:10 PM
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I loved the big sugar eggs with the scenes inside. Otherwise I just remember Peeps, malted milk eggs, and spice jelly beans. Chocolate bunnies, they didn’t have the assortment they have now in candy.
| by Anonymous | reply 20 | March 31, 2024 5:24 PM
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We took my mom to the Easter buffet at 94th Aero Squadron and eventually had to take the kiddies outside to entertain them while my mother ate through the crab legs.
| by Anonymous | reply 21 | March 31, 2024 5:27 PM
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Giving Sean oral in the rain
| by Anonymous | reply 23 | March 31, 2024 5:40 PM
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My sister and I used to get a hollow Palmer chocolate bunny, 2 peeps each, about 10 jelly beans and about 6brightly wrapped little chocolate eggs. Poor as church mice we were. But we loved it that we got FREE CANDY.
| by Anonymous | reply 24 | March 31, 2024 6:02 PM
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I need some fuckin enterta
| by Anonymous | reply 26 | March 31, 2024 6:14 PM
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Hollow chocolate bunnies were one of the great disappointments in childhood.
| by Anonymous | reply 27 | March 31, 2024 8:14 PM
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I hope I can get some Dove dark chocolate eggs (solid, not hollow) on discount this coming week.
| by Anonymous | reply 28 | March 31, 2024 8:22 PM
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R14, we loved it. It made us feel like adults.
| by Anonymous | reply 29 | April 1, 2024 4:13 AM
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