Parenting requires a lot of creative skills. Society expects parents to be costume designers and makeup artists, provide inspiration for fabulous show and tell ideas and buy and wrap the perfect gifts.
When my younger sister wraps a gift it looks like it should be in a magazine, when I wrap a gift it looks like it fell off the back of a truck. Praise be for gift bags.
Although our celebrations may look different this year, Easter is no exception. Parents are expected to show their children how to decorate eggs. It is imperative that parents ensure that the Easter bunny doesn’t forget to hide baskets of chocolate treats for excited kids to find on Easter morning. I would usually be lying in bed when I realized I forgot to do my Easter bunny duties.
I had totally forgotten about the little crocheted baskets Mom made for my kids and filled them with chocolate until I posted the picture below.
Have you ever tried to successfully decorate an egg? My mother-in-law showed me how to decorate eggs with hot wax and dyes, but that style isn’t a project for small children. It’s an art form.
The ones I did with our kids looked pathetic, but I went through the motions. We dipped the eggs in cups of different coloured water and drew pictures on them with special little markers. I sadly admit that I once purchased an egg decorating kit that included plastic wrappers that you shrink-wrapped onto the eggs. That was a creative low point for me. The question after the decorating frenzy was over was always are coloured boiled eggs safe to eat or not? No one wanted to eat them.
All of this has gotten us away from the real reason why people began decorating eggs in the first place. The egg is an ancient symbol of new life. For Christians, the Easter egg is a symbol of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The hard shell of the egg represents the sealed tomb of Christ, and cracking the shell represents Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Eating eggs was prohibited during Lent, so they were used as treats at the end of Lent.
Some claim that the word Easter originated from Eostre, the goddess of spring and fertility. According to folklore, she found a bird dying from the cold and turned it into a rabbit so it’s fur would keep it warm – but that rabbit still laid eggs like a bird.
French and German chocolatiers pioneered edible Easter gifts in the 19th century. The first eggs were solid. Molds were eventually designed to produce hollow chocolate figures. Today you can purchase chocolate Easter eggs that are giant or mini, creme filled or with other flavours added to the chocolate.
The hot cross buns Mom made for Easter are a favourite memory. Their spicy-sweet flavour with icing dripping off the top was a special treat. I can’t forget to mention Mom’s famous bunny cake that I wrote about last year in my post "Easter: Epic Bunny Cake”.
No matter what your beliefs and traditions are, I hope you have an enjoyable Easter with good food and an abundance of chocolate.
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©️Copyright 2020 Norma Galambos
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