Kara Rice
The Signal Staff
While watching my family stuff their faces with great food this past Easter weekend, I couldn’t help but think how this scene has played out in front of me year after year for nearly three decades.
Although monotony is typically dreaded in our everyday lives, we cling to it around holidays and welcome the same familiar activities each year. These traditions are what tie many of our families together.
Most of us know that Easter’s origins come from the Christian belief that it is the day Jesus was resurrected from the dead and has been recognized and celebrated for centuries as such. My family celebrates it in many of the same ways that millions of other Americans do each year. Large feasts are laid out on colorfully decorated tables. They include items like brisket, ham, macaroni dishes, rolls, deviled eggs, cole slaw, bunny cake, potato salad and the list goes on. Spring time flowers in vases, porcelain bunnies, eggs, jellybeans and Peeps have all been used to create the feeling of Easter. Dozens of eggs are dyed and decorated, including confetti eggs made by a cousin each year.
The same aunt or uncle blesses the food and then we proceed to fill our plates, then our bellies. We are lucky if the kids actually sit down to eat, for they are just biding their time until the egg hunt. Having received their Easter baskets earlier that morning from their parents, they are usually fighting off urges to eat large quantities of candy. Some cannot hide the evidence they were unable to wait and wear the smears of chocolate on their tiny hands and faces.
Now that I have a son, I experience Easter much differently than before. Although I love seeing my child light up as he enjoys the fun of the holiday, I can’t help but be saddened that it’s not still me out there being a kid. The torch has passed. There’s no going back and new memories must be made, but that is where the comfort of old traditions wrap around me like a child’s favorite blanket. I find myself wondering if my son will feel the same way in 30 years.
After the feast, the children are waiting. We hide the eggs and release the kids to run wildly into the acreage. We shoot with our cameras, while they run around trying to find eggs in trees, tall grass, flower pots and whatever other clever places we’ve found to hide them.
After the famed Easter egg hunt, the kids count their treasured eggs and compare their numbers among themselves. Some actually eat the eggs while others just carry them around in their baskets for the day. We force them to pose for pictures and allow them to eat the bunny-shaped cake I have made for the past two years in a row. The bunny cake is a tradition from my mine and my mom’s childhood but was absent for a long period of time. I have decided it must return; this is a tradition that cannot die.
The adults end up sitting around for hours, some napping, watching movies or just talking about old times. The day had gone like many before it and although there are slight variations each year, we do our best to maintain the traditions of the past. I can only hope that my son and generations beyond us will continue them well into the future.
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