Easter and Family Traditions
The older I get, the more I feel the pull of family traditions as we cycle through the seasons. The days have been moody lately. It was a sunny 75 degrees one day, cold rain the next, and spitting snow flurries a few days later. This is spring in western Pennsylvania. The forest trails are slick mud over thawing ground, and the new perennials are stretching out of the damp ground. My basement dehumidifier is working overtime, after having a leisurely winter. And Easter is almost upon us.
I recall Easters when there was snow on the ground, and I remember Easters when it was warm enough to wear a floral spring dress to Sunday Mass. This holiday revolved around the church growing up. My parents were split in the religious beliefs and practices. While the religions they aligned with were similar enough, my father a Catholic and my mother a Lutheran, the practice they put into their religions were far different. I cannot recall my mother ever going to church unless it was for a wedding, a funeral, or someone else’s religious ceremony. She participated in the Lenten tradition of avoiding meat and eating fish on Ash Wednesday and every Friday, but I wonder if that was brought on by my father.
My father was my main teacher of religion growing up. He was a Catholic, and brought all four of his children up in the Catholic Church. There was a crucifix hanging at the foot of his bed, and he wore a cross and the medal of a saint around his neck every day for as long as I can recall. Like many, he had ups and downs with his dedication to church, but he turned up every single Christmas and every single Easter season. We would usually stick with going to church for a few weeks, maybe a few months after one of the major religious holidays, but before long, some other obligation or aspect of life would pull us away, and we would take a break, only to return again as we neared the next holiday.
I have vivid memories from church, but few of them have to do with the religion itself or the insight I gained from sermons. I remember having to get up early, as mass was at 8AM on Sunday mornings, and my father had mixed feelings about whether the 6PM mass on Saturdays counted. I remember blessing myself with cold holy water in shallow ornate bowls upon entering the church. I remember my father signaling to me, and whatever siblings came along, which pew we were going to sit in, and then genuflecting before entering the pew himself. I remember the process of kneeling and sitting and standing and shaking hands as we went through the process of a Catholic mass. The parts of mass that remained the same week after week were a comfort, while the parts that changed, the music, the readings, the homily, were a source of curiosity and could usually catch my focus. More often than not, I remember focusing on the rays of sunlight that lit up the floor to ceiling stained glass window behind the church’s altar. I remember tapping my feet or swinging my legs to ease my restlessness, until I got the side eye from my solemn father. I remember sneaking out early sometimes, at the end of communion, to beat the church traffic. The next few hours after church though, that’s where some of my dearest childhood memories come from.
After church, we’d drive home in the still cool morning air. We’d stop at a gas station or the local grocery store for a Sunday paper, and then continue on. Once home, my dad would spread the paper out on our kitchen table and move back and forth between reading it and cooking breakfast. Breakfast usually consisted of bacon or sausage with dippy eggs and biscuits, and maybe a side of potatoes. I’d scour the paper for either the comics or the pets for sale in the classifieds. Easter was no different, except for Easter and Christmas, we’d have a huge ham in the fridge awaiting out holiday feast, and dad would slice a thick slab of it off to make ham and eggs. That was my favorite breakfast, and I don’t know if it was because I liked ham over bacon or sausage, or because I knew it meant a holiday was upon us.
Family traditions are what make the holidays feel like home. No matter where I was living, or who I was spending the holiday with, if I could replicate some of the things we did for a certain holiday, I felt more comfort and peace that day, along with a healthy dose of recollection.
The Easter season started with Ash Wednesday. Despite our Catholic upbringing, we never went to church on Ash Wednesday. My dad worked a crazy schedule and was usually in bed early on weeknights. But the Lenten abstention of eating meat started on Ash Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday and every Friday after that up until Easter, we had fried fish or shrimp or salmon patties for dinner on Fridays. I am not sure where this tradition came from, or if it’s even a tradition elsewhere in the country, but in western Pennsylvania, the Friday fish fry is a serious thing. I don’t recall seeing nearly as many when I lived in Ohio or North Carolina. Another Catholic tradition we follow, even now that my father has passed on and none of us regularly go to church anymore, is fasting from noon to 3PM on Good Friday. I’ve read that Catholics are supposed to limit their eating all day on Good Friday, and again, I’m not sure where our family got our time frame, but we follow it every year. We follow it, despite the fact that we are wrist deep in pierogi dough.
Maybe it’s a Polish Catholic tradition, or maybe it’s just my family’s tradition, but we all gather to make homemade pierogi every Good Friday. We take turns mixing a giant bowl of a dozen eggs and as many cups of flour as it takes to get the right consistency. It’s a lot. Once the dough is right, my brother or my nephew roll out long strips of dough, my sisters and I take turns setting down circles of whatever filling we’re using. The filling could be a cottage cheese and green onion mix, potato, or spring cabbage. We then fold the pierogi dough over, cut, crimp, and into a huge pot of boiling water they go. Once they float, my mom pulls them out and drops them into cold water, then tucks them into a folded sheet stretching across the kitchen counter. Then we do it all over again, and again, and again, until we have over 200 pierogi of various flavors. All of this with festive music playing and once 3PM arrives, lots of pierogi tasting going on.
Easter Saturday was always a quiet day, but Easter Sunday was a celebration of family and spring and resurrection. We used to go to church every year, search for Easter baskets and Easter eggs, and then enjoy the company of my aunt and uncle as we welcomed the hopefully warmer weather and reflected. Like many holidays, Easter to me is all about the build to the day itself. Once Easter arrives, the mood is celebratory but also subdued, as what we had been preparing for arrives, only to pass like any other day, for us to wait another year for the cycle to begin again.
