This is just a quick note to wish one and all a very Happy Easter/Passover/Spring. I imagine that your family celebrates Spring in one way or another and I wonder what the traditions and "rituals" are in your part of the world.
In my family in L.A., we celebrated on Easter Sunday. Today, which is “Good Friday”, the religiously devout went to church, and we always ate fried fish - really "blackened fish" on this day. Saturday, on the Eve of Easter, we boiled eggs (for far too long) and dyed them in lots of pastel colors. They were then hidden in the yard for us children to go hunting for them the following day. Easter Sunday was one of the few times that we went to church. I have a vivid mental photo of the white dresses that we had on. It was always beautiful weather and like one of the warmest days of summer but the air was clear in a blue, cloudless sky. We always received a basket with Easter chocolates in the form of Easter bunnies, See's Candy BonBons and chocolate eggs of various sorts. Also other types of candy eggs, too. And then there was the Easter egg hunt.
Lots of distant cousins and family would come to feast on the Easter goodies, which consisted of “filé gumbo“, ham, potato salad, "deviled" eggs, and probably about 10-20 other dishes, including homemade ice-cream and an array of desserts, depending on what some of my relatives brought with them. Many of the women in my family loved to cook and eat and it certainly showed! This is a fond memory.
Here in Sweden, the traditions are different. Easter is celebrated from Thursday to Monday, and Easter itself is celebrated on the Eve of Easter. This time of year, I am out in the yard, tending my garden, grooming and pruning bushes and trees, raking up the leaves that I didn’t have the energy or inclination to take care of the previous fall, and planting flowers that can take the frost, like Easter lilies (not the bulbs but potted plants) and pansies. A well-needed Spring cleaning and painting indoors are also normal chores of March and April.
On the Thursday before Easter, which is called “skärtorsdag” or “Maundy Thursday”, the children, really the girls, get dressed up like “witches” from “the Brocken”. This is a German tradition that came to Sweden sometime in the 19th century. Like in most of Europe and in the U.S. there was a time when women who were learned in natural herb lore and were healers were pointed out as witches, hunted down and burned at the stake. Halloween has come to Sweden only in recent years; Skärtorsdag, or Maundy Thursday, was the day when the children got dressed up and went from door to door to beg for candy or other goodies.
On the subject of witch hunts, I recently received an email from a fellow marketer who wrote that America is on a witch hunt and Rhonda Byrne, the creator of The Secret, is being burnt on many stakes. She is the woman behind the wildly popular film and best-selling book, “The Secret”.
The Secret has been debated on CNN, Oprah, Larry King, and in The New York Times. And now, for the first, last time, and only time in 2007, you can hear Rhonda's side - The (insiders) Story Behind The Secret
http://www.linkbrander.com/go/37072
Let your friends and family also register - this could make for an interesting dinner discussion!
Whatever your religion and traditions, have a wonderful weekend! Celebrate Spring!
Angela Wickenberg
