Easter

I hope you are enjoying a wonderful Easter week-end and spending time with family and friends.  I always enjoy the opportunity to get together with loved ones for special occasions. As well as the religious significance of Easter, it also heralds the start of spring.  The days are longer and warmer.  You can feel the changing of the season as we celebrate this holiday.

When my boys were little, our tradition was to decorate Easter eggs on Good Friday.  Every year, cousins and friends would gather at our house, we would mix different colours of dye in many cups and everyone could decorate as many eggs as they wanted.  It seemed that each year, something new was available for sale to create even better and brighter eggs: shrink wraps, hot colours, sparkles, special crayons – the list was never ending.  Many tiny hands created wonderful master pieces which were proudly used for decorations throughout the house when we gathered for our Easter dinner.  As I look back through photo albums, I have pictures of so many relatives and friends who took part in our Easter egg decorating day over the years.  The eggs never went to waste.  After Easter, the eggs were pickled and a week or so later, the adults (mainly the male adults) would enjoy pickled eggs.

            One of my favorite Easter memories is of the year my husband’s sister and brother-in-law were at our house with their two children.  Their son was around six years old and was starting to question the existence of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.  We tried to convince him there was indeed an Easter Bunny, but he went to bed still wondering  – although he did leave his Easter basket out,  just in case.  We lived in the country at the time and that spring there were a lot of rabbits going through our yard.  On Easter morning, he awoke to find his basket filled.  Shortly after breakfast, his uncle took him out for a walk and, sure enough, they found rabbit tracks!  He ran into the house and excitedly took his Mom that there was truly an Easter bunny because he had just seen his tracks!  It would be a couple more years before he figured out the truth, but it gave him two more Easters to enjoy the magic of the Easter bunny.

            Of course, the highlight of Easter has always been our family gathering on Easter Sunday.  When I was younger, it was at my grand-parents, then at Mom and Dad’s and now we have our own Easter meal with our children.  The generations come and go, things change, life goes on, but the one constant is the joy of getting together as a family to celebrate special occasions.

            I hope you creat new Easter memories this year and that your holiday week-end finds you surrounded by family and loved ones.

            Enjoying special times with special people . . .  it’s a good thing!