I've been listening to people discuss Easter for the last couple of weeks now. I've been astonished at the toy sales going on. I've looked in vain for the Easter outfits. I've been amazed at the count of eggs being used in egg hunts.
I miss the Easter of my childhood.
I'm not saying it was less expensive to 'do' Easter 50-60 years ago. I don't see how it can have been. Easter marked a change of season and that meant a new Sunday dress, shoes, perhaps a new purse, and possibly a hat. For the males of the family, there were new dress pants and suits, shoes, shirts and ties.
But we got mileage from those things! Oh yes, those Easter outfits did duty until Fall when we got a new outfit each. These were saved for Sundays and if you were a child, heaven help you, don't have a huge growth spurt! I've worn many a too small shoe and too snug dress with a visible hem line where Mama had let down the hem after a growth spurt, trying to hang on until Fall, lol.
I miss the lovely dresses of dotted Swiss, or eyelet, or checked gingham with nylon net slips and I miss the white straw purses, the white patent shoes, the lace edged socks. I miss seeing men in suits and ties for church.
I miss Peter Cottontail. No one ever speaks of Peter Cottontail anymore. My grandchildren were shocked when I sang the song. They had never heard it!
Easter baskets were simple. Perhaps a coloring book, a chocolate rabbit. Sometimes it was only a Chocolate Rabbit. We always hoped it would be a solid rabbit but often it was a hollow one.
Does anyone remember the decorated sugar eggs? My fourth-grade teacher's neighbor made them and she'd bring them into school to show off. They were just lovely! Molded white sugar with a diorama inside of tiny flowers, tiny rabbits, tiny houses.
What fun we had dyeing hardboiled eggs. We used food coloring and vinegar and we did attempt to mix colors. Granny usually limited us to two or three dozen for the seven of us grandchildren. And goodness no egg better land in the mounds of creeping Phlox, lol, while being hidden because there they stayed.
Even egg hunts were simple. Well hidden, sometimes so much so that we'd find an egg much later in the year. We often had those brightly colored marshmallow filled eggs that are nothing but sugar inside and out really and our hard boiled eggs. Perhaps Granny might have a few malted milk Robin's Eggs in a candy dish inside. But egg hunts weren't fussy back then.
Our own church is hosting an egg hunt and they filled 35,000 plastic eggs for the hunt on Saturday.
It was a lovely simpler time.
13 comments:
Oh, Yes....the time we spent peering into that sugar egg with it’s sweet (!) scene. Thanks for the memory and Happy Easter, Terri!
Mom always spent weeks sewing our outfits. I remember a lovely pink eyelet dress with a jacket. I was so sad when I outgrew it.
Easter was as much fun as Christmas for me as a child.Mom always made up a big Easter basket for me with a small toy rabbit or lamb or chick in it along with a big solid chocolate rabbit and chocolate eggs and malted candy eggs. She lined the Easter basket with that fake plastic Easter grass,and then would wrap the big basket with cellophane and would put a big ribbon on it. Usually she put it on the stairs landing near the door to the back yard. I remember the cellophane on the basket one year was yellow and the sun was shining into the backdoor window onto the basket and it was so beautiful to me. It looked like an even bigger basket than it was as the sun shone on that yellow cellophane in seemed like the stairs landing was lit with golden light. It looked magical. I remember it so vividly. The sun must have been reflecting off of that yellow cellophane and onto the walls.
I opened the basket and then had an easter egg hunt outside. Our dog,cat, big pet white rabbit who lived in the yard uncaged all helped in the search. Our big white rabbit was safe from attack from other animals because our big Collie and the cat guarded her.
There were plastic eggs,and some that Mom dyed while I watched and "helped" hidden all over the back yard. Mom kept our Collie from leading me to all of the eggs. I remember eating a bunch of that chocolate in the morning and then by afternoon being hungry and peeling, salting, and eating a boiled egg with salt sprinkled on it, and then in a short time being nauseated.
Mom made Easter late lunch and my older sister and her husband,and family friends would come, sometimes my Aunt and Uncle and cousins would come.
Throughout the rest of the day my cousins and I would rehide the Easter eggs and hunt them again, in fact my neighborhood friends and I would play Easter Egg hunt often as one of the activities we did all of the time until the lightening bugs started coming out in the summer and by that time we would be tired of the Easter egg hunts.
"Dotted swiss." What memories that brought back.
Dotted swiss is a lovely fabric. Gingham seems to have stayed around. I have noticed several fashion bloggers wearing eyelet blouses.
At one of the dime stores in town, chocolate bunnies were for sale and your name could be piped in white icing on it.
I love dotted swiss!
We children all got new dresses or suits, and the girls got real corsages bought from the local grocery store. I cared more about the flowers than the new clothes! We did not get baskets, only a solid chocolate bunny. My husband and I exchange Easter baskets filled with our favorite candies or cookies (he loves chocolate chip cookies above all else!). One year we were living in Scotland and the daffodils were blooming all over. He wove my basket out of daffodils. It was so lovely, I wish I could have preserved it!
For us, Easter was about Lent finally ending! It also meant pratically an entire week of church services (Wed-Easter Sun) which was tough sledding.
The end of Lent also meant TV was back in our lives! Mom always made us give up TV and candy, so you can bet we cared about the Easter baskets and TV more than anything. I don't think Mom realized she was setting us up for focusing on material rather than spiritual values!
If I was lucky, I got a hand-me-down dress from my older cousin. She was a redhead and wore colors like rust, brown, beige--all earth tones. I am a brunette and a "Winter", so none of her things were too complimentary. But, it was the only way I was getting something "new". Shoes were not new--we wore our school shoes on Sundays. I always dreamed of black Mary Janes but I only ever had ugly brown oxfords. We were cleanly and neatly dressed for church, but never fashionably. "We may be poor but we are respectable!" my mother always said.
We did dye lots and lots of eggs, but we did not hunt for them. They were food and not to be tossed around outdoors. They were kept in the root cellar and nestled in grass on a large plate for Easter Sunday display. All 5 of us loved hard-boild eggs, but not egg salad nor the yolk. So dad got to eat the yolks. Sometimes 10 at a time if we had eggs for lunch. He's almost 94 so it obviously didn't shorten his life! LOL!
My own kids had huge Easter baskets filled with sidewalk chalk, new crayons/markers, a coloring book, Easter books, candy, a cute Easter outfit or some other additional apparel. I had so much fun filling them over the years. And we had egg hunts with plastic eggs filled with small change. Outdoors if weather permitted, or indoors. Their memories of Easter are so different from mine...
Conni, I mentioned those eggs to someone not long ago and they had no clue what I was talking about. I noted in a search online that they are now being sold on Etsy as a 'nostalgic' craft item. Well I suppose they are nostalgic. I thought they were so awesome and honestly wanted one so much, even more than I wanted those store bought overfilled with too little junk made to look like a lot more Easter baskets, lol.
Lana, yes, indeed, Mama sewed all my own dresses. The hat and gloves and purse might be bought and a white sweater if it was cooler, but the dress was usually handmade. In fact, I recall only two or three purchased dresses. For the most part, Mama made everything. Thankfully she was a good seamstress and she had a good eye for the style and could replicate things she saw at Belks. I was very lucky in that respect.
Susie what sweet memories you shared! Thank you for taking time to tell about your Easters past.
cityhomemaker, John and I were watching a program the other day and John said "Just look at how nicely everyone is dressed and they're just going shopping!" And they all were dressed very nicely indeed. We are a sloppy lot of people these days, including myself!
Anne and Donna, Don't the words "dotted Swiss" just conjure up so many sweet memories. I love check gingham which as you point out, Donna, stands the test of time and eyelet is popular once more, but why oh why don't they bring back dotted Swiss?
Mabel, corsages! How very nice! I remember Mama and Granny getting corsages on Mother's Day to wear to church. Does anyone wear a corsage anymore?
I was just thinking, I should make John and myself an Easter basket but I won't, not this year. Perhaps next year I shall. I have given him a chocolate bunny in the past.
Sue, I know far too little about Lent. I should try to learn more as I have about Advent, also something we never touched on in my youth or anywhere in my spiritual journey until we began to attend church much later in life. I can see your mother's mistake in forcing the sacrifices upon you children rather than allowing you to choose what you'd sacrifice. I am sure she was very well intentioned.
There were no cousins ahead of me and as I was plump sized Mama made all my clothes, sometimes remaking some of her own clothing to fit me. I was never allowed to choose what any outfit was made from nor how it was to look. Fortunately my coloring was similar to Mama's and she did have an eye for color so again, I was lucky in that way.
Your story about eggs and not hunting them, reminds me that Granny always made us count our eggs and she'd make sure we'd found all the hardboiled ones! We kids ate just loads of them. No doubt because they were a good balance to the sweet eggs, lol, but Granny kept and used up the ones we didn't want to eat.
I'll just bet your kids had a grand time. I know I did something for our kids for Easter but what I did eludes me. I wasn't an over the top...And now that I'm thinking about it I think Mama made the Easter baskets and she did go over the top with the grandchildren, at least for Amie and Sam. She also bought them new clothes for Easter as well.
Seeing all the dotted Swiss comments has made me nostalgic. The bridesmaids in our wedding wore yellow dotted Swiss. I still love the photos of those sweet dresses.
Your mention of dotted Swiss made me smile, then I read the comments and it seems many of us have that in common.
My childhood Easters were simple - we got baskets with inexpensive candy(blech) and maybe an inexpensive plastic kite. Our youngest brother became diabetic, and his first Easter basket was full of fresh strawberries and other fruit. The rest of us got the cheap candy. Blech again. We were all so jealous of his fruit. The next year Mom just made a large communal fruit basket and we were all happy.
I've never really liked Peeps, but Mom put a lot of those in our baskets. Barb Drake loved Peeps, so seeing them makes me think of her, which is bittersweet.
My own children only got a chocolate bunny for candy, but they were solid and good quality chocolate. They did get small gifts as well - a toy or dvd, but nothing extravagant.
We do color eggs with the grands - I have a dozen for each child, and they'll take some home, as well as drop some off to Greg's parents.
It's possible we'll have rain on Easter Sunday at some point during the day (please! We really need it), so possibly no egg hunt. If we do, I'll pop some jelly beans in them.
My grandma always said if it rains on Easter Sunday it will rain seven Sundays in a row. I've found that to be true. Anyone else ever hear that?
Tammy, "if it rains on Easter Sunday it will rain the next 7 Sundays"....yep!! And I have found that it is true as well.
My wedding dress was Dotted Swiss in 1972. Yep, 50 years this June!! My Grandmother was a professional seamstress in Chicago and had sewn Mayor Daley's daughter's wedding dress the previous year. It had beautiful beading and a 10 foot train. I wanted a simple empire waisted Dotted Swiss dress. She kept trying to show me other patterns and fabrics, but I couldn't be budged!! The veil was made of the Dotted Swiss as well. I still think it was beautiful!!
Terri, we live in a small village about 25 miles from Madison, WI, and have a PW grocery store in town. We get a weekly flyer in our paper, and their sales items are quite good, but in general they are more expensive than Wal Mart. This week, for example, Strawberries are $2.50 per lb. Sour Cream is $1.29 lb, Ritz or Nabisco crackers are $2.50, & a 5 lb bag or fllour is $1.99. We like to do WM pick-up orders because we are not tempted by walking the aisles and throwing more items in the cart! It has helped with keeping the budget, but even at WM prices increase weekly if not daily it seems.
Great post!!!!
I always loved, and still do, the sugar eggs. I rarely got one. I have a small one now. It is about the size of a large egg. I've had it for several years and it is unopened. I can still see inside thru the cellophane.
Tammy that is so funny about you all wanting a basket of fruit. I can see the appeal though.
Chris K, I'll just bet that dotted Swiss wedding dress and veil were lovely. Like Lana, that's one fabric I'm feeling very nostalgic about. It seems I also remember in one home we had pale yellow dotted Swiss curtains in the kitchen window.
I think our Piggly Wiggly here has turned into more of an IGA store honestly. You know the chain went through bankruptcy a few years ago and a lot of the Southern stores closed. The ad I get only lists two stores in a 100 mile area, the one in our county seat and another in Jackson, which is good two hour drive from here.
Kathy I really ought to make it my mission to get one for next Easter. I'm sure the children would be as fascinated as I was when I was their age.
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