Reflections Of Easter
I am constantly amazed at the complex randomness that
is the day to day functioning of my brain. I find it amazing
that, on one hand, I can't for the life of me remember the name
of a person I've met and talked to for the better part of an
evening, but on the other, can be simply doing chores around
the house and have a simple smell, a food smell or the smell
of a cleaning product bring back a wealth of old memories of
days long past. I had one such experience the other night, as
I stood in my bathroom and cleaned out the plastic pieces of
my sleep apnea device, first with soap, and then with a mix
of vinegar and water. As I stood there rolling the plastic pieces
around in the sink, the smell of the vinegar wafted up to my
nose and I immediately began to flash back to the Easter holidays
I had when I was a kid.
Easter was a great time of year in western PA. The weather
was still not really warm enough to go around in summer clothes,
but not cold enough to require more than a light jacket. Of
course, being Catholic, the whole Easter holiday started gearing
up some 40 days before Easter Sunday, at Ash Wednesday. On Ash
Wednesday, we would all pile into the car either before school,
or for the 6 pm mass after school. Ash Wednesday, by the way,
is one of the many "Holy Days Of Obligation" in the
Catholic Church and, as all good Catholics know, missing service
on a H.D.O. is grounds for a non-stop, one way trip to hell.
(And if that's true, I can pretty much guarantee that I won't
be alone on THAT trip, will I?)
The Ash Wednesday service usually entailed the usual mass,
with one exception. At some point in the mass, the priest(s)
stood at the front of the church and proceed to rub ashes, in
the shape of a cross, on the foreheads of the parishioners.
These aren't any ordinary ashes, either, the Catholic Church
was apparently prescribing to the whole "re-use, recycle"
thing years before it cottoned on with the granola eating, Birkenstock
wearing crowd. The ashes used for Ash Wednesday would be the
charred remains of the previous years Palm Sunday palm leftovers.
(or at least that's the line they told us in CCD (catechism)
class on Monday nights.) So… one hour later, freshly massed
and foreheads ashed, my family would begin Lent, and start the
40 day countdown to Easter.
A popular pastime during Lent for Catholics ('cause we're just
so wacky!) is to give up something for Lent, to sacrifice it
during those 40 days. Most people pick things like chocolate,
candy, gum, fast food, or something that is technically considered
an extravagance. Of course, one year after I moved to NC, I
worked with a bi-polar lady who decided to give up her prescription
drugs for Lent. I can honestly tell you that, without a doubt,
those were the longest 40 days of my life!
Also a mandatory thing for the strictly adhering Catholic would
be to abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent. This
seemed to be way easier for me to remember and stay "enrolled"
with when I was growing up. The schools would normally be serving
fish on those Fridays so it wasn't too hard to grab some fish
for lunch. For dinner, Mom would either bake up some fish sticks,
since the only way to get us kids to eat fish was to cover it
in breading and either bake or fry it.
If she wasn't up for cooking that Friday, we'd go out to Bull's
Tavern for a fish sandwich. Now Bull's Tavern had possibly the
largest fish sandwich I'd ever seen at that time. The fish plank
(aptly named) was about as long as my forearm, and about as
wide too! We'd head into Bull's and get a few fish sandwiches,
slathered down in about a quarter cup of tartar sauce on a long
toasted sub roll. I'm sure neither Christ nor the Catholic Church
had this particular meal in mind when they came up with the
"meatless Friday" rule for Lent, but hey, if everyone
prescribed to the exact wording of the Bible, my parents would
have stoned our neighbor Betty Menoher for getting divorced
as per Deuteronomy 22:21, killed each other for working on the
Sabbath as per Exodus 31:15, or sold their children into slavery
as per Exodus 21:7. Not having heard of a huge boom in black
market Catholic children during the 70s and 80s, I can thankfully
assume that my parents took the Bible less literally than most
in this regard.
The next big milestone during Easter would be Palm Sunday.
On Palm Sunday, Catholics everywhere celebrate the day that
Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. It seems like kind of
a lame reason to celebrate, but hey, that's Catholicism for
ya! Palm Sunday was the start of a really awful week for Christ,
all things considered. He ended up getting betrayed by his good
friend Judas after the "Last Supper" on Thursday,
crucified to a cross and dying on "Good" Friday and
then pulled down, wrapped up in a sheet and buried in a cave
'til Sunday. One should always consider his ordeal before one
says that they've had a really bad week.
On Palm Sunday, we'd all get dressed up and head off to church,
and, as we entered the church, we'd each be given a palm. The
priest would come round at the beginning of mass and bless the
congregation, spritzing us all generously with Holy Water, which
tended to be nice and cooling as the church had rather abysmal
air conditioning back in those days and tended to really heat
up when crowded, especially on a H.D.O. mass.
It was generally good practice to keep the palm for good luck.
My grandmother would do some "palm origami" with her
palm, fiddling and bending and knotting into a nice, neat packet
and then tying it to the sun visor of the car to bring good
luck when driving. I'm not entirely sure that this was very
effective, especially in the case of my mother and her brown
LTD Crown Victoria.
My mom had been involved in an accident on Longbridge, between
Latrobe (where she worked) and Ligonier, where we lived at the
time. A few weeks later, on the day we got her car out of the
auto body shop, she and I were driving it home and a car rear-ended
us in front of the old Mellon Bank in Ligonier. Fuming, my mom
got out of the car, gearing up to really curse out the guy who
had hit us. She stopped suddenly as he emerged from the car
and she realized his arms were amputated at the elbow. The look
on her face was priceless. Her jaw nearly bounced off the trunk
of the car as she leaned back into the car window and said,
"Jesus…he doesn't have any arms. How the hell was
he driving the damned car!"
I think this might have been one of the funniest moments of
my teenage years as I saw my mother's jaw fall back open when
the man explained to her that he hadn't meant to hit her car
and that his daughter was the one shifting the car for him as
he was unable to do so himself. I sat in the car, nearly bent
double in laughter as my mom shrugged off getting his name and
insurance information and hurriedly got back into the car, stunned
at the whole thing. Of course, I was more than ready for her
when she got back into car. This opportunity was just too good
to pass up. I kidded her the whole way home, saying, "Jeez
mom…you looked like you were gonna rip his arms off…
oops… too late!" and "For a minute there, I thought
if you were gonna torture him, bamboo under the fingernails
probably wouldn't be a good way to do it." Or my favorite,
"Jeez mom…you gotta give him a hand… driving
like that." This incident was grist for the mill for AGES
in my family and is one that my mother, to this day, has not
quite gotten over.
On Holy Thursday and Good Friday, my grandmother would begin
to collect the ingredients for the Blessed Basket. What is a
Blessed Basket, you ask? Well, it's a tradition in my family
that one meal on Easter is eaten from a blessed basket of food.
So, we'd go out shopping and get all the stuff needed for it.
First off would be ham. Ham was a staple of the Blessed Basket.
We'd get a nice sized ham and put it in the fridge til we had
everything else ready. Next, Grandma would get to work on the
Easter Cheese. Easter Cheese is probably like nothing you've
ever eaten before. (really!)
Easter Cheese is basically a dozen or so egg yolks and milk
stirred together over high heat until it begins to curdle up
a bit. The thick, gloppy mixture is then poured into a set of
cheese cloths sitting in a colander and allowed to drain a bit.
The ends of the colander are then pulled up and twisted and
tied tight so that the mixture forms a rough ball shape inside
the cloth. The mixture is then set inside a cool, dark place
to drip for the next day or so.
To the uninitiated, this may seem odd, perhaps kinda gross.
My roommate, for example, stumbled upon an Easter cheese I had
let drip in the downstairs bathroom and was completely freaked
out by it when grabbed hold of it thinking it was an odd looking
shower sponge. Once the dripping is finished, we would take
down the bundle and unwrap it. The outside should have formed
a light skin and the texture of the cheese will be a light,
egg-y mass.
Eating Easter Cheese is simple. Slice it into eighth inch slices,
sprinkle on some salt and pepper and eat it… or alternately,
use it like cheese on a ham sandwich. Alone, it doesn't really
have a taste, but with Ham, it still really doesn't have a taste.
In fact, I can't think of a way to eat it where it really has
a taste. It's yet another one of those "Slovak Heritage
Mystery Foods" that I make and eat simply because I grew
up with them and it just wouldn't be the holidays without them.
Next up is the Paska, or Easter Bread. Now, I do have to say
that this is some really good stuff! This is a nice, light bread
(sometimes with raisins) that basically anything from butter
to ham to Easter cheese is good served on. My grandmother would
get a loaf of this whipped up and then put it aside for the
Blessed Basket.
Next up was the coloring of the Easter eggs. We would color
eggs on Friday morning, on the long counter in my grandmother's
kitchen. This is where the smell of vinegar comes in for me.
My grandmother was a purist. We would get some tall glasses
and some water, vinegar and some food dye or Paas kits and color
a large batch of hard-boiled eggs. The smell of the vinegar
would permeate the entire kitchen and we would spent most of
our time trying to retrieve the eggs with that little brass
octagonal wire doohickey that came in the Paas kit. At 1 pm,
we would stop and Grandma would say the rosary as the bells
from St. Anne's church rang out, signifying the death of Christ
on the cross.
Later, once all the items were assembled, they would all be
fit into the Easter basket, and covered with a cloth Also included
in the basket was a small votive candle that had been placed
inside a pretty, stained glass cup that we would take to the
church and light for Easter Mass. The basket would then be taken
to St. Anne's church and blessed by the priest.
On Saturday, we would all head up to Grandma's house to eat
from the Blessed Basket. All the waste from the meal, ie., egg
shells, ham fat, uneaten food, etc., would be collected on a
plate and burned in a furnace or fire as the food was 'blessed'
and was not to simply be thrown into the trash.
On Sunday, we would all go to Church, dressed in our new spring
Church clothes and dresses and celebrate the Easter holidays.
After the mass and coffee hour social, we would head back home,
to change and get ready for an early Easter dinner at our house.
We would have more ham, mashed potatoes, hard boiled eggs, Paska,
holubky (meat and rice rolled in cabbage), and pierogies.
My grandmother would get us kids candy baskets for Easter,
because, there's nothing a growing child needs like a 5 lb solid
faux chocolate Easter bunny, packages upon packages of peeps,
and bags of sweet-tarts. Once we got our traditional Easter
buzz on (or barfed from eating too much sweets) we would spend
the rest of the day watching televised Easter classics, like
"Here Comes Peter Cottontail" where Vincent Price
was the voice of the dreaded Irontail, the evil rabbit that
tried to stop Easter. You see, the true meaning of the holiday
was never lost to us children, thanks to the 60 minute magic
of Rankin-Bass.
As I stood in my bathroom, thinking back on those days of glasses
half filled with vinegar and food color, of Palm Sunday palms
and Easter Cheese, I think how important it is to affix every
family gathering, no matter how great or how small, into my
memory. Whether it be when an 18 month old nephew of mine stood
up in his crib, and proceeded to beat me with a stuffed cat,
or the time I throttled my next oldest sister at the foot of
the stairs on Christmas Eve over a large quantity of spilled
ginger-ale.
Memories, like fine wine, tend to only get better over the
years. I can only hope that all of you have as many great memories
of family to look back on as I do. I know I'm doing my part,
buying my nieces and nephew pounds and pounds of sweets each
year at Easter and having them shipped in time for the holiday.
Come to thing of it, I'll have to go online and see if Peter
Cottontail is available in DVD, just to make sure they don't
miss a thing this Easter.
Have A Wonderful & Joyous Easter!
-Billy Burrew
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