Ed Karshner: I remember the oatmeal box baskets. We would make them in Sunday school the week before Easter and get they would be waiting for us in our classroom Easter Sunday.
My favorite memory was the Living Cross. It was a big cross made out of 2x4s and chicken wire. Everybody would bring fresh cut flowers to put in the cross. We always managed to find tulips growing around the house to pick.
There are a lot of pictures of me and my brothers standing next to the cross outside Walnut Street UMC in Chilicothe.
Lee Mears: Easter is my favorite holiday. I still love it; new life all around us. Being young , going to church, then to Grannys all dressed up to hunts eggs with cousins was heavenly. We always sang HE AROSE at church and other Resurrection music. The weather was usually warm. At home, Mother always had the Easter edition of IDEAL Magazine with photos of flowers and country churches etc. Still have all the photos … and of my own children later as well. What a lovely time with warm cozy memories. I so miss my family.
Zelma: I remember so well the patent shoes, frilly dresses and hats, and the light jacket required for chilly Easter mornings. My mother always made a 3 layer coconut cake. She went all out–chose a coconut from the store after shaking it, broke it open with a hammer, and grated her own fresh coconut, and the coconut water went in the cake batter. She also fashioned spring flowers from gumdrops which she meticulously rolled out and cut and shaped, and then placed on top of the coconut cake as decorations. I wish I had a picture of one of those cakes, because they truly were masterpieces. She could be so artistic, but never thought she had any talent. My memories remind me in so many ways that she had very special talents.
Jim Casada: I wonder how many of your readers remember “fighting” eggs at Easter time? This was done by striking the more pointed ends of boiled eggs against one another. It was grand fun to have a “champeen” egg which reduced a bunch of others to the makings of egg salad. Of course there was always some sneaky country boy who had access to guinea eggs and snuck one of them in amongst his dyed chicken eggs. A guinea egg is as hard as the fowl which produce them are loud. I haven’t heard (or thought) of fighting eggs for years until a few days ago. It was commonplace when I was a boy.
Paul Certo: Mrs. Wanda recalls when she was very young she lost one of her new Easter shoes in the mud walking back from the Church House. Seems her foot sunk so deep she couldn’t find her shoe! They never did find that shoe, so somewhere in the old road towards Millers Fork Church, is an old, very muddy, girls shoe, entombed until they decide to pave the road, and a grader unearths it. Not sure they ever will pave that road, though.
Last night’s video: Family History and Stories of Opal Corn Myers 15.
Tipper
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Jim, we still do the egg fight to this day. Easter breakfast starts with tapping the eggs from the youngest to the oldest, this year from ages 5 to 63. They are waxed and dyed. this was from my husband’s side of the family, I always thought it was a Urkranian tradition.
My Easter memory is going to church after getting our Easter baskets. We wore frilly girly dresses and white Easter hats with a ribbon. White shoes and gloves. And of course a tiny purse. My purse had chocolate malt balls inside which I ate through the whole mass. My mom made ham and potato salad. I would put the salad on top of the ham. I never really liked ham that much. She did bake a bread with boiled colored eggs shoved in the top. That was good. Those are really nice memories for me. Most of my relatives are gone, my brother and oldest son are still in California. The son that lives with me will work tomorrow night for a few hours. I’m going to make a venison tenderloin. My son is making his homemade pizza and shredding the meat on top. Some how it’s not the same. I guess that’s what they mean by “the good old days”. Everyone have a wonderful Easter. Anna from Arkansas.
In elementary school we had an Easter Egg Hunt every year. We hid eggs, hunted eggs and had an Easter Egg Fight for those who didn’t want to take their collection home. One year somebody (I think it was Eddie Cross) snuck in an egg made talc. His egg destroyed almost everyone else’s eggs before he got caught. Nobody got mad at him because we were all fascinated with his talc egg.
They mined talc at Hewitt’s over in the Gorge at one time and Eddie lived over in there somewhere. Talc is soft compared to other minerals. I can picture someone with a pocket knife carving a out perfect talc egg to use as a nest egg (or as a weapon in an egg fight).
I don’t have access to big chunks of talc so I have to make Hollywood Eggs. Holly, if procured correctly, produces a pure creamy white wood that also might do well in an egg fight.
Do you still have a ½ dozen Hollywood Eggs?
Ed-I do 🙂
Jim, I remember fighting eggs; but the losers never made it to egg salad. The winner got to eat the loser’s egg when we played.
Such great memories!:) Happy Easter weekend everyone!!!
Randy: Those folks that only go to church on Christmas and Easter we call Christers. I’ll be home with just the two of us tomorrow. Some of my wife’s family has planned a get together and I’m sure several in my family will also. I have a torn rotator and my wife recently fractured two vertebrae, so we are better off away from the crowds. Especially the tricycle motors and ankle bitters that are always running to and fro.
Years ago I tore or damaged my rotator in my throwing arm, but did not have an operation, I can no longer throw anything over hand with that arm. Y’all have an acceptable excuse for not going tomorrow. I will be going to a sunrise service in the morning at the cemetery of my wife’s grave. My church will have a sunrise service, eat a light meal together, and then the choir will sing and that will be it. I do will not go to any of it. By the time I get back from the sunrise service I go to, it will be pretty much over at my church. Watch out for those little “crumb snatchers.”
I remember having a new dress to wear, whether it was store bought or homemade, a little hat and gloves and the ruffled white socks with some patent leather shoes. I remember some of the ladies in church wearing orchid corsages. We sang songs and my favorites were and still are, He Arose and He Lives. We had egg hunts and always a delicious meal. Even though our parents and most family members are long gone, we still carry on the traditions with our own family now. Easter is such a wonderful time especially if you are a believer.
I enjoy reading other people’s memories from the long ago—things that I thought only my people did I find was done all across the south….I dont think the people in the north or on the west coast know how to have good plain fun like we all grew up having lol. Wet airish day here in Oklahoma–yep it is the ‘Easter Snap’ but it will not put a damper on anyone’s festivities from Sunrise services to scrumptious meals and kids running here and there hoping to find the ‘prize egg’ (do people still even hide a prize egg, perhaps that has disappeared over the years) HE AROSE–HE IS ALIVE AND HE LIVES FOREVER MORE
Good morning everyone. Today I would ask for prayers. Thirty yrs ago today even as we speak at 9:02am 168 lives were lost which included 19 children at the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
I lost my classmates husband, as he worked at the Social Security office.
We remember as if it was yesterday and know they were chosen angels.
So please send up prayers for those lost, those that survived, and those that were changed forever.
Blessed be the father, son, and holy spirit!! Amen
Those are wonderful Easter memories. When I was a little girl department stores sold these little sets of a white straw purse with straw flowers on it and a pair of white gloves. I got one every Easter till I grew out of the “children’s ” section. I felt so grown up with my little purse and gloves.
I enjoyed the memories you shared. They were lovely. Happy Easter everyone!
Easter Sundays were always special days for me as spring is my favorite season. I am the oldest of five children and for Easter we usually received new clothes for the special occasion. We all had Easter baskets filled with yummy candies and had Easter egg hunts in our yard. Sometimes we celebrated with our aunts, uncles and cousins over a large meal after church. April 22, 1962, was a very special Easter Sunday for me. That is the day that I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior (I was saved from my sins.) I was thirteen years old and very shy. My Sunday school teacher is responsible for leading me to the Lord. She has been gone for a while now, but I will see her again one day in heaven.
I remember mama always made sure we had a dress and patent shoes and sometimes an Easter hat. I don’t know where she found the money for that each year. We always got up on Easter morning to find a solid chocolate bunny for each of us sitting on the kitchen table. I remember one year when I was around 12, I made my littlest brother and sister an Easter basket out of little green tomato baskets mama got from the store. I crocheted them both something that looked like an egg with arms and legs from scraps of yarn my aunt gave me and I put some chocolate eggs and footballs that I had bought for a penny each from the little store across the road. I had bought them each time I had a couple pennies, and saved them in the freezer—I just really wanted them to have a basket. We always sang “He Arose” and other songs in church on Easter morning. I have 14 people coming for dinner at 12:30 today and a big egg hunt for the grandchildren planned. It will be so fun. I hope everyone has a wonderful, blessed Easter weekend.
No big memories of Easter except maybe getting a new shirt to wear to church and the early sunrise service and then later on having a Ester sermon about the Crucifixion of Jesus and singing songs such as He Arose about the Resurrection. Going to church was not unusual for my family, we went anytime the church doors were open and went every Sunday after church to my paternal grandparents home to eat after the morning service. For some they only go twice a year to church, Easter and Christmas. I have been known to call the Easter church service with many of the members, especially the ladies showing off new clothes more of a fashion show. When I was a child growing up we didn’t know anything about the Easter Bunny, if he had showed up at my home, he would have been shot and ate for one of our meals! As for eating with my grandparents, we lived beside my maternal grandparents and would come back home early enough for mother to see some of her brothers or sister that would come every Sunday afternoon to be with their parents. The closeness of being/visiting with family and grandparents and then later on with my wife’s family was not a once or twice a year thing, this was something I experienced every weekend or even during the week throughout the year all of my life. Now there is only memories of doing this with them. My sister in law is cooking dinner tomorrow for the ones left in my wife’s family, none left in mine, they still include me.