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Joyce Kiefer |
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Are the Easter celebrations
of our youth disappearing?
of TheColumnists.com
Another holiday rises before us. Let’s see, is it St. Patrick’s Day or Easter? My local craft store seems confused. They showcase the paper shamrocks up front alongside a display of plastic bunnies. They stuff the Easter baskets in a bin in the limbo of the back aisles.
Clearly Easter isn’t revered as a
holiday that vibrates with family warmth like Thanksgiving and
Christmas. Think too much about Easter and your teeth ache. Shelves
and shelves of candy–jelly bean eggs, chocolate eggs, marshmallow
chicks.
Like Christmas, Easter has a creature who delivers holiday goodies.
He’s a huge bunny wearing a jacket. Like Santa, he’s
male and brings candy, but unlike Santa, he’s low on gifts.
He also hides hardboiled eggs and occasional plastic ones stuffed
with money. Someone boils the real eggs, the kids dye them, and
then the bunny hides them. Are they eagerly eaten? Only at first
and only if the yolk is fairly solid.
Easter seems to be receding from the wondrous occasion it was when I grew up in the midst of the last century in St. Matthew’s Catholic parish in San Mateo on the San Francisco Peninsula. I think its particular joy stemmed from the period of self-denial that preceded it–-the 40 days of Lent. If Christ died on Good Friday and rose again on Easter, the least we could do is respond as He did before beginning His ministry: Spend 40 days in a desert of no dessert, give up some of our favorite things in order to focus on cleansing our souls. Most of us gave up candy. “Do something positive too,“ the nuns admonished, “Like being extra helpful at home.” It was more dramatic to give up candy. Besides, how would your mom like it when the helpfulness dropped off right after Easter?
It was not that I ate that much candy to begin with. But to be offered a Hershey bar by my Protestant neighbor pal and have to say “no”-- that was excruciating.
All of San Mateo got into Lent. Fish was featured in the grocery ads all week long, not just on Friday. Grownups must have given up meat because they were too old to care about candy. From noon to 3 p.m. on Good Friday– “The Three Hours” --all the businesses closed down. St. Matthews was packed. The Good Friday services in the main church were broadcast in the basement for the overflow crowd. Once I saw Mrs. Levy there. I babysat for her good Jewish family, or so I thought they were. She caught my eye and smiled ruefully. I never asked what she was doing at my church on Good Friday. She never told.
I think Lent was about mystery and anticipation,
like all good liturgy. Two weeks before Easter–“Passion
Sunday”--we’d show up at Mass and find all the statues
shrouded in purple bags. I was convinced this was because Jesus
became invisible when people tried to stone Him because He said
He existed before Abraham. “Therefore they picked up
stones to throw at Him but Jesus hid Himself.” John 8: 58-9.
I loved the fact that saints, angels and God could become invisible
whenever they felt like it. Sometimes I wished I could, too.
My husband, a former altar boy, told me the shrouds had nothing
to do with disappearance and more to do with the serious countdown
to Easter. But I’ll never forget spending the next two Sunday
Masses plus Stations of the Cross trying to recall which statues
were under each purple bag. Had they been switched around?
As I saw it, the services on Good Friday bordered on spooky. I later learned that other cultures are far more dramatic about this encounter with sacrifice, death, and a feeling of desolation. As an adult I visited a Greek Orthodox Church and saw a coffin with a Christ figure laid out. And I spent an afternoon in a remote area of New Mexico speaking to a member of the Penitente sect, known and outlawed for reinacting the crucifixion.
At St. Matthews and other mainstream Catholic churches, Good Friday was the only day when Mass was not celebrated. Instead, the priest celebrated the “Mass of the Pre-sanctified,” which wasn’t a Mass because a host was not consecrated. The altar boys used clappers instead of bells during the service. The door of the tabernacle on the altar was left open to show emptiness inside.
I seem to recall that “Dies Ire”–“The Day of Wrath”– was chanted in Latin. My mother told me that it was sacrilegious to talk during The Three Hours. She must have waited all year to experience three hours of me being present but silent. For me this was worse than giving up candy.
Lent, for some reason, was over at noon the next day, Holy Saturday. We could finally give up sacrificing whatever we had given up. But it didn’t seem right to eat candy before the Bunny brought it in such decadent abundance the next day.
Easter morning was glorious in a way that Christmas morning can never be. St. Matthews blossomed in Easter lilies placed in front of the statues, which were now revealed again, shiny and clean. The organ boomed and the choir sang the triumphant opening hymn, “Ye Sons and Daughters of the Lord, the King of glory, King adored, this day Himself from death restored. Alleluia!”
“Gloria in Excelsis Deo” returned to the Mass and the altar boys rang their bells. The congregation was dressed fit for an Easter parade and everyone looked around to see who was wearing what. Straw hats with flowers and veils bloomed everywhere. Hues of lilac, yellow, blue, and pale orange painted linen suits and organdy dresses. The sun always shined that morning.
Sometimes my parents celebrated with friends in Berkeley over a dinner of roast lamb. Other times we got together with my aunts and uncles and ate ham. During the egg hunt Uncle Joe would re-hide some of the eggs so we’d find them weeks later while pulling weeds. For years I kept my special gifts of frosted sugar eggs with peep holes that showed stand-up figures inside.
For me, Easter began to recede from prominence when my children’s public school declared a “spring break” that did not always land at Easter. I had to take them out of school to attend Good Friday services. A dozen years ago my husband and I spent an Easter visiting our daughter in Australia. For the Aussies, Easter was like our Labor Day–a time to catch the last blast of summer before the antipodal fall set in. The Sydney Royal Easter Show featured sheep shearing and wood chopping contests. A Christian movement called “Reclaim Easter” was trying to get the public mind past a long weekend at the beach and the racks of candy on every city street corner.
I understand that Easter, rather than Christmas, is considered the most important feast day of the liturgical year in the Orthodox Church. It makes sense. Christ began His journey at Christmas but completed its purpose and showed its success at Easter. But to fully appreciate the burst of this special Sunday, you need the tedious soul-searching and self-denial of Lent, a solitary task.
That’s something that’s hard to sell.
©2008 by Joyce Kiefer. The illustrations are from IMSI's Master Clips Collection, 1895 Francisco Blvd. E., San Rafael, CA, 94901-5506, USA. This column first posted March 17, 2008.
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