Easter; Memories of Eggs, Dogs, Cold Cuts and Japanese Tourists

“New Rule: Someone must x-ray my stomach to see if the Peeps I ate on Easter are still in there, intact and completely undigested. And I'm not talking about this past Easter. I'm talking about the last time I celebrated Easter, in 1962.”  ~ Bill Maher

“And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. The tombs broke open and the bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life. They came out of the tombs, and after Jesus' resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many people.” ~ Gospel according to Matthew 27:50-53.

It’s Easter; the time to celebrate eggs, chocolate, hard boiled and jelly bean; pastels; bunnies; baby chicks; horrid marshmallows called Peeps; bright flowers and spring.  Oh yeah, it also celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after he was crucified, which is celebrated as Good Friday.  That’s the Christian (read; original) version of the holiday and I’m not here to refute it or ratify it.  I’m not feeling a religious debate today. 

In the secular sense, it seems that Easter in America has become a kind of third tier holiday.  It falls on a Sunday so nobody gets it off as a special occasion and if you regularly work on Sunday then guess what – you work on Easter.  And God forbid (no pun intended) that shopping malls should close down.  They barely close on Christmas Day.  I don’t even know that secular folk even celebrate Easter the way in which they celebrate Christmas.  There are Easter egg hunts; except if it’s being done at the local community center as it is here in Hercules, in which case it’s called a “spring egg hunt.”  Yeah I get the establishment clause thing but sometimes it seems to go beyond the pale as if saying the word makes you a raving Papist.   

Speaking of Papists, and Christians in general, Easter is a big deal for them; a bigger deal even than Christmas.  If you think the throngs of casual Christians at church on Christmas are big, check out Easter. It’s like they’re crawling out from under rocks which is appropriate because in the Bible the first evidence that Jesus had flown the funerary coop were the boulders that had been moved from in front of his tomb.  Easter’s a big deal because the whole premise of salvation and rebirth in Christianity hinges on Easter or as it says in 1 Corinthians, "if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins." Without Easter the whole house of cards crashes down.

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During my childhood in the weeks leading up to Easter, an Easter Bunny would be stationed at shopping malls much like Santa at Christmas.  It was one of those kid photo-ops in which you blurted out what you wanted for Easter in the few seconds that you were afforded for your audience with an oversized, goofy looking and usually very frightening rabbit.  Are there still mall bunnies?  Are kids still fed the Easter Bunny lore?  I don’t know who came up with the Easter Bunny but as holiday myths go he's ludicrous.  Is that the best we could bring to the Easter brunch table?

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Easter is also the only time of the year when small children and colored dye are allowed to mix.  The wife and I used to cover every square millimeter of the kitchen table with a double layer of newspaper and put out bowls of dye to color hardboiled eggs.  Cora would admonish the kids to be careful and not spill the dye.  She’d issue this instruction every now and then – like every 10 seconds.  Now the kids are grown up and they bring their own children over to the house to color eggs and we cover every square millimeter – well, you get the idea. 

The next morning before the kids got up I would hide the eggs around the yard and they would compete with each other to see who could find the most eggs.  Actually the one who could find the most eggs if he were allowed to have his way was our dog Phantom.  Phantom would follow the kids around the yard and as they strolled past a bush hiding an egg Phantom would stop, loiter by the bush and take a more detailed sniff until I’d call out, “Phantom, get over here!”  At a certain point Easter egg hunting became a competition between me and the kids.  As they got older they became better hunters and I had to get more inventive.  As I became more inventive they became better hunters and so the competition carried on into their early teens; a sort of Pascal grudge match.  The only egg that they were never able to find was the light blue one that I sunk in the pool. 

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Our family Easter tradition has always been a brunch of assorted cold cuts, cheeses, home baked breads and of course; hardboiled eggs.  I would tag along with my mom when she went to the old fashioned deli to get the cold cuts and cheeses.  Nothing came pre-wrapped.  The deli-man would ask what she wanted and mom would tell him; "Mortadella, 1/4 pound; capicola, 1/2 pound; soppressata, 1/2 pound."  He would shave off a slice on his machine and then show it to mom for her approval.  The memory brings back the delicious smells of a real delicatessen with a huge variety of cheeses, cold cuts, salads, store made pastas and focaccia.  Real delis are as rare as gold coins these days.  If I want to enjoy a real deli it means a 25 mile trip to Molinari's in San Francisco's North Beach.  Shame that my grand children may never savor that delightful smell. For the most part Cora and I have kept the tradition alive.  Easter dinner has always been roasted leg of lamb.  It’s been at our house every year and I suppose it will be until we’re in our dotage at which point I guess we’ll find out if our children maintain the tradition.

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Cora is the last religious hold out in our family.  To her disappointment, the kids bailed sometime in their teens.  She’s asked and admonished but she might as well be asking them to wander the desert for 40 days and 40 nights.  I've been in and out of church over the years.  When I’m not going I’m doing Easter brunch duty; hiding eggs for the grandchildren, setting out the food for brunch or otherwise getting the house ready. 

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While the kids haven’t been to church in a decade of Easters they can at least say that they spent one Easter weekend at the Catholic mother ship.  In 1993, right around Easter, I was laid off from my job and so finding myself with no work and no income I did what any irresponsible adult would do.  I bought a trip to Rome for me and the two kids and left the little woman at home to work and be responsible.  It was a great experience for the kids.  They met their Italian relatives, saw Rome and Venice and spent Holy Week in a country where they know Holy Week.  On Good Friday I took the kids to the Vatican for mass.  For those who haven’t seen the inside of St. Peter’s Church; it’s big, real big – over two football fields big.  And on this Good Friday it was the most crowded I’d ever seen a mass.  The place was wall to wall full and standing room only.  Well, it was standing room only for those who didn't have a ticket. And so there we stood; me, my 10 year old son and 7 year old daughter, on one of the roped off edges of the giant basilica.  I noticed that a great many seated ticket holders were Japanese tourists.  I imagine that when they booked their Roman holiday they opted for the Good Friday mass tour.  It was a long mass; a very, very, very long mass and as it went on and on and on, those Japanese tourists who weren't drifting off to sleep started drifting out of the building.  It was just a few at first, as if they were embarrassed to leave. I guess when it was clear that leaving early wouldn't get you rounded up and brought to the Coliseum to be fed to the lions it became a jail break, and suddenly there was plenty of seating - and guards that wouldn't let the standees take a seat. As a group of seats opened up right in front of us a tiny little nun noticed that I was there with two small children and motioned for us to go under the rope and sit.  She waved off the guard who moved to stop us; after all, in St Peter’s a nun has more horsepower than a mere guard.  I still have the three missalettes (programs) from that service; written in various languages including Latin.  I hope that my kids will hold on to them when they’re faced with the chore of rummaging through the stuff I’ll leave behind. 

Easter supper at my Zio Carlo’s house was a magnificent feast.  There’s always an abundance of food at the Italian table but for Easter the bounty increased tenfold.  The wine flowed until after dinner when it was replaced by Spanish brandy.  It was the first time that my children had goat; a dish which my son still relishes.  My daughter still remembers the huge hollow chocolate Easter eggs that had toys inside.  After the feast we walked to a local park where families gathered to enjoy a carnival.  I suppose that what I took away from that Easter in Rome was the experience of a holiday that focused on the day and the family and less on commercialism.  Whether you’re religious or not it’s refreshing to see a day celebrated for what it is rather than what it puts in your purse.    

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Some offices, particularly on the East Coast, let employees off early for Good Friday. At the place that I met my wife the owner of the company made it a policy that those who wanted to go to church on Good Friday could do so.  It was a short half block walk down Mission Street in San Francisco to 100 year old St. Patrick's Church.  He was a stern Jewish fellow named Alexander who was called Mister "A" and he knew the importance of Good Friday and the sacrament to the many Filipinos who worked there.  Cora loved Mister "A" and talks about him often, especially around Good Friday when she recalls his kindness and gap toothed smile as he reminded folks that Good Friday was a short day.  A few years later I worked at a different branch of the company that was located on 6^th Street near San Francisco’s Hall of Justice.  On Good Friday we would leave work early and walk down the alley to a dive bar called the Inn Justice.  The sacrament there was happy hour snacks and a shot and a beer and we took the sacrament repeatedly. My office won't close early. They’ll be open to the bitter end of the day because if they close they might actually miss out on a dime or two.  That makes sense.  I work for a company that’s owned by an investment firm and the only thing my company makes is rich guys in Texas richer.

Old St. Pat's. Incongruous among the high rises 

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I’m writing this and its Holy Thursday; the day that commemorates the Last Supper.  According to the wife, who’s the family religion expert, the Holy Thursday Mass also has a washing of the feet.  She tells me that the priest washes the feet of one of the congregation; I guess everyone else will have to go home and wash their own feet.  That would be fine with me.  I don’t really want anyone messing with my feet anyway.  Its six o’clock in the evening, when my wife watches news from the Philippines.  I glance up and notice that there isn't any news; looks like an infomercial.  When I ask Cora what happened to the news she tells me that they don’t have news on Holy Thursday.

“Whadya mean no news? You mean nothing happens? No crime, no politics, no scandals, no politician emailing a picture of himself to a woman who isn't his wife?”

“Of course there is but they don’t broadcast news.”

That’s definitely a tradition that I could embrace.  And forget about one Thursday a year; let’s do it two or three times a month.   

This year, in deference to my daughter not having to move two small children to our house, the egg coloring is going to happen at her house.  She can take up the tradition of covering every square millimeter of her table and worrying about small children and spilled dye.  The Easter egg hunt is being done at her house also.  It’s going to be a memorable egg hunt with a 3 year old, a 4 year old and her three dogs roaming around the yard in search of hidden food.