Easter Traditions - Old and New.....

I woke up this morning and was delighted to see it was a bright and sunny day. Just the way Easter should be. Easter is a great holiday. Obviously, it has significant religious meanings. But it also comes right at the start of spring. It signals a rebirth and renewal, of everything.

Happy Easter, everybody!

Easter brings it's own set of traditions. Maybe not as many as Christmas, but plenty nonetheless. The obvious ones are colored Easter eggs, Easter baskets, jelly beans, and candy. But there are many traditions, maybe hundreds of years old that are still used.

My wife's family is Eastern European, (Slovak). They have a number of traditions for every holiday. My wife makes sure these traditions are upheld. Even her family occasionally refers to her as the "Slovak Ambassador". But it's important. While it seems like yesterday we were kids, we are fast becoming  "elder statesman" responsible for keeping some traditions.

Easter treats my wife made.

For example, many eastern European people take their Easter food to church on Saturday to have it blessed. I had never heard of this until I met her family. The traditional Easter food includes sausages, ham, and potato salad. Chopped beets and horseradish are also included on the Easter table, (not my favorite). Also the first hard boiled egg of Easter is divided into as many pieces as there are people at the table. That can mean some pretty small pieces. The food also includes a delicious Paska bread and Pecan rolls. My wife makes these from scratch. Always a highlight.

The most unusual of her traditions is this: After getting the food blessed at the church on Saturday, the wife hands the husband a bucket of water to dump outside the house. That's it. My mother-in-law didn't really know what it meant either. Nobody in her family has any idea what it means, but it's a tradition. So it carries on.

It got me thinking. It's never too late to start a family tradition. For example, the last few years, we have gotten together with my buddy Mike's family for Good Friday fish fry. We follow that up with an Italian restaurant on Saturday before we go to church for a Easter vigil Mass late Saturday night. It's great. Most of my relatives have passed away. So it's great to share the holiday with people you've been close with for many years.

Any little thing you decide can become a tradition. It's up to you. If you've done it two years or more, it's a tradition. Keep doing it. Hundreds of years from now, your descendants will be doing it with no idea how it started. Like the bucket of water. It's a way to be remembered. Something about you will be remembered by future generations, even if they never met you. Kinda cool.

So I hope all my friends and readers have a wonderful Easter. I hope you can make it a tradition to keep Hanging with Rich.