Easter

Easter was always a fun day to look forward to. Somehow the excitement of Christ's resurrection was always lost on me. For me, Easter was focused on the fun stuff:

1) Church - We always had special music at church on Easter Sunday. Junior Choir sang many years, and it was always fun to anticipate those performances. I loved music, if you haven't figured that out by now from previous posts. Back then there was an evening service as well as the morning service. The evening service was always a cantata put on by the Adult Sanctuary Choir. I always loved it, and later on actually joined that choir and performed those special musicals with them.

At the front of our sanctuary, up by the baptistry, there was a cross-shaped window. Nothing fancy. Not stained glass or anything, just a plain clear cross like this one, only ours was outlined with wood. Every Easter, a local florist was hired to come in and put white carnations all around the border of the cross, in effect replacing the wood border with a carnation border, on a light green wall. That was always something I looked forward to seeing, but I was a weird kinda kid. Enjoyed the small stuff, I suppose.

Our first Easter in the new sanctuary, Pastor Stiles hired the guy to come and put the flowers on the cross. The guy showed up, and at some point Pastor Stiles went outside the church to discover the guy up on the church roof putting the flowers outside, on the steeple cross! By the way, here is a picture of Osborne church with the steeple clearly shown. Pastor Stiles corrected the guy, and he came in and put his flowers on the window cross instead!

2) Every year we got new dresses for Easter. We would make a trip to the fabric store and pore over the pattern books until we found one that mom liked. Then on to the rows and rows of fabric to pick one that was just right for our new dresses. Plaids, prints, solids, lace, checks--there was no end to the possibilities. Most years, especially when I was very young, all four of us girls would have the same fabric in the same color and print. By the time I was nine or so, we were getting the same fabric in different colors of the same print.

Then mom would take it all home and her project over the next several weeks was to lay patterns, cut out patterns, and sew together dresses for all four of us. It was hours and hours of work for her, a labor of love for sure.

3) We always got new shoes for Easter. Back then, you wore black shoes from Labor Day in September until Easter Sunday. From Easter Sunday until Labor Day you wore white shoes. So we would all go to the shoe store and buy new little white shoes and white socks to go with our Easter dresses.

4) We would dye Easter eggs. Nothing fancy, just dye them and sometimes put on decals or transfers. By the way, I hated to eat hard boiled eggs. So mom was always trying to figure out ways to get us to use up all those eggs we dyed!

5) Then, of course, there was the Easter candy. Chocolate Easter bunnies, jelly beans, gum drops, and marshmallow eggs. Yummmmmmmmy!

6) Family gatherings were always fun. We always got together with my cousins and my grandma. Sometimes if it was raining, we would have our Easter egg hunts indoors, but most of the time it was outside in the backyard. I wasn't very good at it, as I recall.

Thankfully, as time went on I began to realize the importance and significance of what Easter was all about. It became very important to me to find the balance for my own kids. It was good and okay to have fun, but in all the festivities let's not forget or ignore the significance of what Christ's resurrection means to us.