In case you haven’t figured it out yet, Easter is going to be a little different this year. While I don’t celebrate the occasion, I do consume my fair share of Cadbury Mini Eggs, chocolate bunnies, and Manischewitz wine.
I remember as a kid, waking up Easter morning in search of a cheap wicker basket lined with plastic “grass” overflowing with candy. My parents would warn me not to eat too much, but who ever listened to their parents?
After finding the basket that my mother really wasn’t too good at hiding (it was always in her bedroom closet), I’d head two houses over to my elderly neighbors who were pretty much my unofficial grandparents.
You see, there’s a 13-year difference between me and the next youngest sibling. I was the one who came along much later in my parent’s lives and I’m pretty sure the news of my inconvenient conception was met with a collective, “oh shit.”
(My father, during one of the last Christmas dinners before his departure from planet Earth, finally admitted that yes, I was unplanned, but yet such a welcome addition to the family.)
Anyway, since my parent’s parents were already underground, I didn’t have grandparents, so my neighbors filled that void until they were planted six feet under.
They took the day’s events a little further. They made me partake in an Easter egg hunt where they filled dime-store plastic eggs with dime-store candy and hid them in various places around their home and yard.
It was fun but tortuous for a youngster who just wanted to get high off of cheap candy and sugar.
Of course, in between all this, there was the visit to the local church, where even on Easter Sunday the priest would beg for money for a new roof and “persuade” those in attendance to drop a little more than their usual buck in the collection basket.
Those holiday visits to the church of the almighty dollar were more about the congregation showing off their “best” outfits and sharing the lastest neighborhood gossip with each other, than the real reason for the gathering.
But then again, Easter was always the “show off” holiday. Just look back at those Easter parades that were the highlight of the day. Men, women, and children donned their finest garb and trotted around town, noses in the air, determined to be the best dressed even if they weren’t.
My family wasn’t immune to the casual display of upper-middle-class Easter finery. As the late-in-life child, I was the one who got exactly what he wanted (without any pushback), was doted over by parents I often equate to Archie and Edith Bunker and was spoiled rotten. It also meant that I was the proverbial “apple of my parent’s eye” and was the center of attention – otherwise known as the new shiny thing to put on display.
Around this time of year, I usually post a picture of a newspaper advertisement on my Facebook wall. It’s an advertisement featuring yours truly, modeling a 1970’s leisure suit for a local clothing and shoe store.
I can only assume that it was my mother who used her power of persuasion to get the store owners, who were neighbors and close friends of the family, to use her handsome son in the ad. Needless to say, my modeling career never made it past that one newspaper advertisement in little old Wilkes-Barre, PA.
It didn’t score me any points when I auditioned for the role of Steve’s replacement in Blue’s Clues, either.
We’ll save that story for another day.
Today, many Easter traditions have gone the way of the Smith-Corona replaced by who knows what. This year, in time of quarantine, we can pretty much forget community egg hunts, parades, pictures with the Easter Bunny, and even those visits to church.
However, we can still take time on Easter Sunday to look back on past holidays, even if we’re dressed in our “best” sweats instead of our leisure suits, and remember what it was like as a child.
We can view those days through the wide-eyes of a youngster, thrilled to wake up and search for eggs laid by a fantastic rabbit that are filled with the most delicious treats ever to be made.
We can remember being that young child getting dressed in our best clothes, heading to church to be with other families and hear, “you look so handsome.”
We can remember spending time with family members who aren’t with us anymore – like my parents and my adopted grandparents – and thank them for everything they did that allows us to sit here today and recall events like these that make holidays something special.