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It’s that time of year again.
Easter.
A day we celebrate Jesus’ death. But he rose again and because of the, the holiday has always been associated with rebirth. Plants and flora which died during the harsh winter, are renewed by Spring’s dewy kiss and usually Easter usually represents that first big pucker.
Plus in the Gospel According to St. Nonie, you can start w
earing white again when the clock strikes 12:01 on Easter morning.
I have interesting childhood memories of Easter.
I remember hunting decorated eggs, though NEVER this beautiful. To have found eggs like those which you see in this basket would have been incredible. No, the eggs my sisters and I found were these very faint pastel numbers with our names crudely written across them.
Mother always decorated our eggs. Picasso she wasn’t. She got the idea that using a birthday candle to spell out our names across an un-dyed egg would work. In theory, I suppose, was that the wax was supposed to have repelled any absorption of the dye. It kind of worked, though as time went by, mother got bored and resorted to initials.
But then, as I got a little older; the Easter bunny wouldn’t make it to my house at all.
One morning I woke up, peered out to the front yard and saw nothing. There was no trace that he’d been there. I woke my parents up and tearfully informed them of his horrendous oversight and they told me through intermittent yawns that the Easter Bunny called them late the night before and told them that he broke a paw after falling down at an apres ski party in Gstaad and wouldn’t be able to make it our house that year.
He didn’t make it the next year, either. Embarrassed that they’d forgotten to “bunny up again”, mother nudged daddy that Easter morning and he sheepishly gave me some lame excuse about Mr. Bunny being audited by the IRS for the tax years 1963 and ’64 and was up to his ears in legal trouble.
I semi bought the broken paw bit, but would/could the IRS be so cruel as to audit the Easter Bunny???? I simply stopped believing after that.
In the small South Texas burg where I was raised, we celebrated Easter just like anyone else. We got up, went hunting for ugly eggs, played with a few stuffed animals, nibbled on a chocolate egg or two when the Paters weren’t looking, got dressed in our new Easter finery which included crisp crinoline petticoats, gloves and hats with elastic chin straps that hurt when they were popped or chafed because they were so tight.
We’d go to Mass, came arrive back home to a feast of baked ham, scalloped potatoes, green beans, a spring salad and invariably for dessert, a homemade yellow cake with white icing and on the icing was green tinted coconut to look like grass and Jelly Beans to represent Easter eggs.
How is Easter celebrated elsewhere?
Well in England, ham is also eaten and this special cake is made and served at tea time.
It’s called a Simnel Cake, a rich fruitcake covered with a thick layer of almond paste (or marzipan for the kitchen literate).
A layer of marzipan is also traditionally baked into the middle of the cake.
Eleven egg-shaped balls of marzipan are then placed around the top to represent the 12 true disciples (excluding Judas).
Originally the Simnel cake was a gift to mothers on something the Brits called “Mothering Sunday”, which usually fell in mid-Lent.
I do believe however, that here in the colonies, we call that, “Hallmark Scores Big“…or rather, “Mothers’ Day” which for us, occurs in the month of May.
In Mexico, Easter is celebrated with mass, family gatherings and cascarones. These are hallowed out egg shells which are then cleaned, dried and filled with confetti, glitter, tiny 
bits of paper or whatever one can get out of the huge three hole hole puncher found on Cranky Catherine’s desk. She’s the woman no one likes, but who’s been the receptionist at your father’s office forever.
Traditionally, these are cracked over the head of an Easter reveller. It’s tremendous fun, especially when glitter gets caught in your eye and all those tiny lacerations caused by those tiny, thin shards of sharp tinsel burn like fire. Just Heavenly!!
In Budapest, overweight women who really should know better than to wear floral print, festively decorate large eggs in the same town square where 67 years ago, Nazi troops shot innocent people, JUST because it was Thursday.
In The Philippines, street parades are held on Good Friday with people carrying large crosses to re-enact Jesus’s walk to His crucifixion.
In Australia, hot cross buns are served for Easter breakfast. These are a sweet fruit bun, which may have a cross on top. Children exchange Easter eggs, which
are usually made of chocolate. Some chocolate eggs are also in the shape of cheeky looking rabbits, but in recent years Easter bilbies have also been made.
The bilby is a very ugly native animal in Australia that looks like an insipid cross between a rat, a rabbit, a possum and an aardvark. It’s as if nature found that it had all these spare parts leftover at Creation. It just said, ”Well hell. Let’s just toss all these extra things in to a salad spinner, give that bad boy a whirl and see what kind of crazy shit we get”.
And voila!!! The bilby.
It’s an endangered species, from what I understand. Australian chocolate manufacturers are doing what they can to help. A few years ago, they started making Easter bilbies and they give a portion of the profits to help protect these ugly ass critters from full extinction.
And back home, in Washington, DC, the Annual Socilialist Vernal Equinox Egg Roll is a great time to be a kid with a basket in hand in search of festively decorated ova strewn all over the White House lawn.
Here, Premier Obama and Speaker of the House Pelosi, kick things off with a rousing speech about their rejetion of an international economic order sustained by private profit, alienated labor, race and gender descrimmination, environmental destruction and the brutality involved in upholding the social order and the violence used to defend the capitalistic status quo.
Yes, this photo IS proof that all things with BIG EARS can be extremely frightening.
I mean Santa is one thing, but you be a little kid and get shoved in the lap of a HUGE humanoid rabbit with large buck teeth and the most menacing expressions and try not to cry.
Big, huge rabbits are scary.
For example:
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Steroids???
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This next one is very strange.
It looks as though it’s part rabbit and part something that would be worshipped by black robe wearin’ coven members who think Satan is their pal.
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Oh Petulant Lepus, be not angry and sullen….
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Or dastardly…
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Or vomit inducing…
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Happy Easter, kids.……………………………………………………………………….
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