Easter Eggs and Disappointment

Easter is approaching, I’m told. I never know when Easter comes because it changes all the time. I suppose it’s a good thing it’s not set on one day because this way we always totally get a long weekend, but it keeps you on your toes because you never know when it’s going to land. Whoa, it's Easter! Holy Crap!

Easter was not a huge deal in my family. It was a day of sugary treats and “I suppose we should have ham”. Mom did lay out egg hunts for my brother and I, giving him strict instructions to leave the most obvious eggs for his little sister with the low tolerance for frustration and short attention span. Thanks, Garth. They hid those solid sugar candy eggs that would rot your teeth in seconds flat. Loved them.

 We got chocolate bunnies until I was about 12 and then that gravy train was abruptly derailed. The last Easter chocolate I got was a big solid Easter Egg with my name written on it in scrawled icing.  It was pretty unusual for the time, and I guess mom figured to give her egg shaped daughter one last chocolate hurrah before Junior High school and peer pressure fell in to place and I started associating chocolate with shame and binging. 

We didn’t do a big dinner. My parents were like the Captain and Tenille of the United Church of Selkirk, Manitoba, and so were busy doing Easter music things. Practicing the sad parts of Handal’s Messiah. It’s not all Hallelujah, you know. Mostly, but not all. 

But otherwise, at Easter for our family,  it was business as usual. Without Easter Egg hunts, what was the fuss about? Maybe Jesus was the first Easter Egg hunt. His disciples hid him, like a candy egg, under a rock, and then God went looking for him and found him! What fun!

Selkirk has a large Ukrainian community and Easter was a bigger deal to them, what with their breads and holopchis and all. In a weird way, I’ve since associated Ukrainians with Easter, their amazing Easter Eggs being the likely source.

http://www.ukrainianegg.com/cool.htm

Those Easter Eggs were beautiful. And evil. Mocking me.

When I was young, we did get to paint Easter Eggs. Sounds like fun, right? Sadly, although it kept me occupied for a while, it was ultimately a let down due to my unrealistic easter egg expectations. In my mind they would need to look like the Ukrainian easter eggs, all ornate and filigreed, like the ones in Susan Henkawich’s mom’s china cabinet . When they turned out looking like pastel turds, I was always disappointed. Why couldn’t I make them look like the fancy ones? 

 Mom never got me the kits with the wax so that you could make easter eggs that didn’t look like hell.  She got us the cardboard kits form the drug store that had cute bunnies on the packaging but delivered nothing but bland watery colour. 

Note that this package contains "US Certified Colors". No Communist Hippy Colors in this box!

Fancy Easter Eggs weren’t part of our culture. Scots don’t decorate Easter Eggs. They deep fry them and pickle them. And then spend hours yelling at them in a drunken rage.

Damned stupid eggs. Owe me money. Stole my sheep. 

Since those days I have had little interest in painting Easter Eggs. Seems so wasteful. Those eggs could be used to make some kind of bland, heavy meal that needs to be stuffed into an animals intestine. It’s hard being Scottish. Everything is awful. 

Anyway, Happy Easter.