When I was a little kid, Easter was my third-favorite holiday ranking right behind a gift-laden Christmas and a candy-hauling Halloween. I always looked forward to waking up on Easter morning and searching for my Easter basket, skillfully hidden by that sneaky rabbit. Once located, I would feast on the marshmallow Peeps and Reese’s peanut butter eggs within, pushing aside the inevitable jelly beans and letting them begin their journey to the bottom of the swatch of Easter grass, becoming petrified, and ultimately headed for the garbage can by July.

My Mom used to put together an Easter tree every year to sit upon our dining room table. The ‘tree’ was a dead branch that she’d scavenged from our yard. She would secure it in a wad of modeling clay to stand upright. The main decorations were egg shells. My brothers and I would get to poke tiny holes in the eggs, puncture the yoke with a toothpick and blow the innards out. Then we’d paint them and decorate them with stickers and other doily stuff that resided in Mom’s sewing basket. Easter grass would surround the base of this Easter tree and gradually spread all over the house. Each year, it was only a matter of time before one of us boys would accidentally knock the tree over (my two younger brothers were usually responsible, of course). A mad scramble would ensue to right the tree and all of its decorations. But there was always at least one eggshell that met its demise and had to be hidden in the bottom of the garbage can.

We went to church every Sunday, but Easter Sunday was always a big event. We would wear our finest. I remember one year I had a devastatingly handsome butterscotch-colored leisure suit. When my brothers and I were really young (in other words, before we could put up resistance), my parents dressed us in matching outfits, replete with bow ties.

Church was always packed on Easter Sunday, as this was the day that many youth would be baptized. Proud parents, grandparents and the like would snap multiple Polaroids of their wet-haired protégés after the worship service, smiles gleaming as they gathered around the Easter Lilies on display in front of the Lord’s Table. They each would get a new bible. I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to be the ‘center of attention’ and get my very own church-issued bible with my name already written in it.

Easter Sunday was also the one day every year that the entire Woods clan would travel from our respective churches around Cincinnati and meet up at a buffet restaurant; food of all sorts, and take as much as you want! Grandpa would load up his plate with meat. Grandma with ‘yucky’ stuff like cottage cheese, Jell-O and salad. We kids would hit the ice cream bar as soon as we had consumed enough ‘appropriate’ food and create sundaes that would choke a horse.

My grandfather looked forward to our family Easter feast as much as any of us kids, but he always started out that meal, as well as any other family feast-time held throughout the year, with a prayer. When my grandfather became weak from various illnesses later in his life, he ‘passed the torch’ of saying the prayer to his sons and even to a grandchild on occasion. This was a tradition that “stuck” with me and obviously made an impression.

I’ve noticed that the commercialism of Easter now saddens me. In a Sunday School class I taught one Easter morning, I was discouraged to see that a couple of kids brought along a small stash of their Easter basket haul. But the candy was ignored as I talked about how that Easter morning long ago played out. They were full of questions – who, how, why. So I’m always heartened to see the little children of my church are getting the true message of Easter behind the chocolate smokescreen that society throws at us.

I hope that families everywhere work hard to instill the true meaning of religious holidays with their children and that they hold fast to family traditions at Easter; to build a strong foundation of faith behind it all. After all, Christ was God’s Easter vision for us to celebrate!

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