Easter

a post that is a bit overdue

Easter is late this year but it doesn’t really matter unless you depend on school holidays. Particularly if your father is a teacher. And I always seem to be a bit late with my posts.

With a family that wasn’t particularly family oriented, holidays like Halloween for instance meant simply candy corn and pumpkin jack-o’lanterns, but no trick or treat with neighboring children.  Easter too was a strictly family affair. It meant nests of hard-boiled eggs dyed sky-blue or red and jelly beans and chocolate rabbits, but had nothing to do with Jesus and the Resurrection. We always hoped the weather would be nice so that the nests could be hidden somewhere among the bushes and trees on the hill in front of the house. If there had been a late snow or it was raining, our hunt would be focused on indoor hiding places like the couch or a closet. As a child, there’s one Easter in particular I remember – nobody ever told us it’s religious significance, why it was celebrated. Indeed, even Christmas had no particular religious significance for us – it meant a tree and presents and perhaps the pageant at the college where my father taught, with the angel Gabriel telling Mary she was to bear a child. At home my sister and I used to have a great time taking turns at being Gabriel and Mary. And then we would also march around the house singing “We three kings of Orient are.”

Easter when we were little consisted of colored eggs and chocolate bunnies, yellow marshmallow chicks and jelly beans, with our favorite cherry-flavored ones at a premium. While most Easters were pretty much alike, there was one Easter that stands out in my memory. The day must have been sunny and my sister and I roamed the hillside looking for Easter nests. Keep looking, our parents said. What else were we supposed to be looking for? we wondered. And finally, we found the answer, tethered to bushes across from the house. Fluffy white angora rabbits with pink ears, one for each of us!

When I had children of my own we no longer lived on a farm. Traditions in Italy were centered on pageants of the Crucifixion and Resurrection in most of the small neighboring towns, beginning with Pentecost and processions of Confraternities accompanying Christ’s Way of the Cross. For children, but also grown-ups, Easter was synonymous with pyramids of large chocolate eggs piled up in all the shops. They contained a surprise in their hollow insides, with pink or blue wrappings indicating that they might hold miniature cars or batman figures for boys or a glittering bracelet or a keychain for girls.  It was also possible to have the pastry chef put a personalized gift in the egg. and I would sometimes have him insert a real gemstone or a tiny Japanese netsuke if it was meant for an adult. After the traditional Easter meal with hard-boiled eggs, cold cuts of various kinds as well as coratella, a sort of stew of the innards of the lamb, not necessarily to everyone’s taste, and the home-made Easter bread redolent of cinnamon and rosolio, the egg would be smashed and the chocolate shared.  

While I followed the Italian traditions, I also wanted my children to be acquainted with the colored eggs of my childhood. Sometimes, if I had been in the States, I would bring back a pack of colors, impossible to find in Italy. A few days before Easter Sunday when the priest would pass by to bless the house and the eggs, my children, still young, would help out with preparations. As we sat around the kitchen table with plastic cups of red, blue, or green dye, they would vie with each other in drawing designs with white wax crayons on the eggs before dipping them in the colored bath of their choice.

One year, with no bright blue or red colors available, we followed advice found online.  You could attach a leafy frond or flower to the egg, then wrap it in strips of cloth to keep the leaf in place, after which it was boiled in water containing onion skins. I also tried using red cabbage leaves or red beets, but onion skins were by far the best, conferring a lovely marbled tan hue to the egg. I would save onion skins several weeks in advance and one year asked one of the venders at the market if he would give me the skins in the box where he kept his onions. To my surprise he knew what I wanted them for.

As my children grew and their places were taken by a grandchild, we would often include guests from the American university with its program in Orvieto. Their students had all gone elsewhere and I enjoyed sharing our family festivities and knowing that we were creating memories they would treasure in the years to come. It was as if our family were opening its arms to embrace those away from home.