Easter in Africa: Get a Hat!

With my sister on the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem

Easter is the holiest of the high holy days of the Christian calendar. It is therefore also a holiday filled with lots of tradition.

We go to Church. We receive palms on Palm Sunday. We eat special foods. We wear brand new clothes from head to toe. We celebrate rebirth and the resurrection with hot cross buns, orchid corsages, lilies, hyacinths, daffodils and tulips, dyed eggs, jelly beans, marzipan and chocolate bunnies.





And some of us wear hats.

I grew up wearing hats at Easter and bought and wore a new one each and every year. Yes, Easter is first and foremost the holy day where we commemorate the resurrection of our salvation, the Lord, Jesus Christ ... but it also a great day to go out and get a hat!

And for as long as I can remember our Easters looked like this ...

the line outside St. Patrick's waiting to get Lenten ashes inside

First, on Ash Wednesday, we begin the 40 day season of Lent by going to church and having a black cross made from the blessed ashes of last year's burnt Palm Sunday palms applied to our foreheads. Sacrifice, Stations of the Cross, rice bowl banks, and fasting follow.

It is also the day when we dropped off our written request for free tickets to the 10:15 Easter Sunday High Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral ...







... and on Easter morning, we would take those tickets and go to Mass.

St. Patrick's Cathedral is the perfect place to wear an Easter bonnet ...

... because the Cathedral's Fifth Avenue center doors open up after the recessional and before the Alleluia chorus and you and the music (Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah) literally spill out into the epicenter of the annual Easter Parade.

" ... the photographer will snap us, and you'll find that you're in the rotogravure"

Yes, that Easter Parade.

on the avenue, Fifth Avenue

It's not really a parade; it's more like a promenade started by the dressed-up worshipers who attended services at the many cathedrals and churches which still line Fifth Avenue.

Fifth Avenue itself is closed to traffic for more than ten blocks and it has now become an Easter street festival ... and in the past few years, somewhat of a carnival.

And New York's modern answer today to the rotogravure? That would be Bill Cunningham's "On the Street."












My sister and I finally made it into his column - only once - after literally years and years of being photographed by Bill on Easter Sunday.














Mass and the Easter Parade are followed by brunch out somewhere festive (we are all dressed up after all!) and nearby with the Easter puppies and/or ...

... with an Easter bunny.

some of my pysanky collection

Other traditions we enjoy, ...

I have been making pysanky - the traditional Slavic Easter eggs -  for many years. I decorate and lacquer them and save them from year to year until they eventually dry up inside. Some of these are more than twenty years old and very fragile! They did not make the commute to South Africa and are (hopefully) safe in storage back in the USA.

In addition to pysanky which are not cooked and therefore not edible, we would also hard boil and dye other eggs to eat!
















It is also traditional in Slavic cultures to have your Easter foods ceremonially blessed at church.











Getting ready to bring our Easter food for a paschal blessing at my sister's church in Denver on Holy Saturday.

Mindowaskin Park in Westfield

When our children were little, we would take them on Easter egg hunts at our church, clubs or local town parks.

We also always had our own egg hunts at home on Easter morning. This one was a Holy Thursday scavenger hunt we organized all around our garden for my niece Aly a couple of years ago.

The last clue led her to the greenhouse which hid her garden-themed Easter "basket."

Once we graduated from chocolate bunnies and jelly beans, our Easter baskets took on many shapes and themes, like my niece Jill's Marie Antoinette paper crown "basket" ...

... filled with goodies fit for a queen. xoxo

Or another year, these Jason Wu pocketbooks filled with little Easter gifts for my sister.

 ... and my niece Jill.
















A tool-bag-turned-Easter-basket for my son Nick.

Vince was the most creative of all with his Easter baskets though. Like a couple of years ago when he was making this dovecote for me for my birthday in May - and before he raised it up on its high metal stand - he used it as my Easter "basket" in April. Clever boy!












My soon-to-be dovecote became a temporary "peep-cote."















Clearly there is no substitute for New York's Fifth Avenue Easter Parade in Jozi. There is only one Easter Parade. So that is one tradition we will have to forgo this year. But in anticipation of our move, I had already started shedding traditions last year.

I spent last Easter in Denver with my sister and her family. My sons came out from California for the weekend. (Poor Vince was already in South Africa with the Easter puppies.) We did go to church of course and had Easter brunch and festivities at my sister's country club. But no Easter Parade and so I decided, no hat. Why buy another hat just to turn around and add it to the already burgeoning storage container in Missouri?

Jill

But we did dye Easter eggs at her home ...

Nick

... and made Easter baskets too.

















We prepared special foods. And it was still so great!!!












Not exactly sure yet what our Easter will look like this year in Africa. We are planning to spend it scuba diving (Vince) and snorkeling (me) in Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony and therefore guaranteed to have at least one Roman Catholic Church around for an Easter Mass.

... But unlike last year, I already know it will include a hat!