Ed Ammons: 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.
Gloria Hayes: 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.
Brenda T: 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.
Last night’s video: The Panther on Cold Mountain & Other Stories 17.
Tipper
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I hold all my Easter memories so dear. Wishing the Pressley/Wilson families a Beautiful and Blessed Easter! He is Risen!!! ✝️
Peggy in Grants Pass
These memories are wonderful! My memories are of a new Easter dress and new shoes, the Mary Jane style. Patent leather or something, and didn’t wear them often enough to break them in before Easter Sunday. I live in the south and grew up going barefoot, as often as I could, and come by it honestly. Apparently, my aunt didn’t like shoes either. Daddy tells a story of when he and his sister would walk to school, and as soon as she got out of eyesight of Grandmama, she’d take those shoes off and leave them at the edge of the cornfield, then put them back on from their way home from school. That was back in the late 40s-early 50s, and I reckon people were happy the children were in school so didn’t bother them too much about no shoes in the spring.
My feet don’t like shoes to this day, to tell the truth. Still go barefoot as often as I can.
Happy Easter! Am sure there will be feelings and tears, the first one without Granny. The “firsts” after a parent dies are always hard, as y’all know. But you know she’d want y’all to be singing and praying to the Lord and maybe even enjoying her Holy Smoke cake.
I remember getting a homemade dress from “dotted swiss” fabric, so heavily starched it itched. Egg hunts were always for dyed hard-boiled eggs, not plastic eggs with candy inside. You had to make sure you found ALL the eggs or they would go rotten and stink.
So many fun memories! I can relate to many of them , except , thankfully , maybe the egg fights , lol ! Wishing you all a blessed Easter weekend!
easter was when i got my new coat every year, i’d forgotten that! also a new dress and shoes, but i suspect those must have happened more than once a year. mama would often make my easter dress just because she wanted to, i think. i remember my father hiding eggs in the backyard but then nit being able to remember quite where they were, or maybe that was 4th of july fireworks? probably both. i remember eggs made of sugar that you could look inside to view a little scene—one of mine lasted until i accidentally spilled orange juice on it a couple of months later. i only liked chocolate bunnies if they weren’t hollow, and once famously asked where the “bunny (dyed) eggs” were, probably because they were lost in the backyard…
My most unique Easter memory. I can think of those Easter Sunday mornings with everyone in their finest clothes with my sisters and mother wearing new dresses while walking through a foot of snow. But the most unique Easter Sunday was the sunrise service at Kailua Beach on Oahu. It was either 1995 or 1996 and I wanted to attend the multiple church. service on the beach. The service would start at 6:00 AM. I wanted to be at the parking lot by 5:00 AM so I could lend a hand in helping to set up for the service. The problem being that Sunday morning was the Sunday that the time changed, we were springing forward an hour. I calculated what time I needed to be at the beach to take into account the time change. I got to the parking lot and found I was the only one there. So I waited and waited and waited some more. Some of the local crab catchers walked by my car with their nets and gave me funny looks. A police car drove by me several times and the last time I turned on my inside light and showed the police my bible. I waited in the dark for over two hours before anyone showed up. Finally a couple of trucks showed up some of the musical instruments. I walked over and asked if I could help. I also asked if they changed the time of the service and they said no. I told them I had 5:30 AM on my watch and they started laughing. I asked what was funny and they said “you must have changed your watch because of the time change.” I told him yes. He asked how long I had lived in the islands and I said four years. He then asked me how many times I had changed my clocks during that time. I thought for a moment and I finally realized Hawaii does not recognize the time changes. I laughed at myself along with the other men. We had a fantastic Sunrise Service and after the surface I was baptised in the Pacific Ocean by one of the parties who was there. Several hundred people were also baptised that Easter Sunday morning. So beautiful to be singing watching the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean.
I remember Easter church service. The sanctuary would be filled with lilies. All the ladies and girls wore dresses, hats, and gloves. My mama and grandma always had orchid corsages, and I would have a carnation corsage. Easter egg hunts, Easter baskets, and a big Easter supper with my grandma’s coconut cake.
Does anyone remember the small chocolate crosses that Roses sold? They were individually wrapped. Mama was my Sunday school teacher at the time and when class was over, she gave each of us one. I also remember most years; at home she would put out a small tray with fake grass and put jellybeans in the grass. We couldn’t eat the jellybeans until Easter. I bought a bag this week and apparently, they don’t put the black ones in the bag anymore. My son and I were talking this week about when he was in kindergarten us parents boiled and dyed eggs and brought them to school and we hid them. There were no candy eggs. When they were done finding them, the teacher brought crackers and the kids sat and peeled their eggs and ate them with their crackers. Sweet memories!
Ed’s talc egg story reminded me of a friend by the name of Hermon. He spent a couple of weeks before Easter carving and painting a wooden egg for egg fights. A couple of older boys caught onto him by win 5 or 6. They asked to see/hold his egg. He resisted and they downed him and took it away.
HE IS RISEN! HE IS RISEN INDEED!
One other memory, the Easter Bunny never came to my house when I was growing up, if he had he would have been shot and fried for our supper! There was no extra money for candy or toys.
I have wonderful memories of Easter from my youth and beyond. My mom made Easter first about giving praise and glory to our risen Lord Jesus. We would go to early sunrise service, then home where she somehow had our baskets out and eggs hidden for us to find while she made dinner. We had a big dinner then more egg hunting and then she served her special cake. It was a Bunny cake made with two round pans. One round cake was the face, the other cake was cut with each side in a half circle which was used for the bunny ears and the center of the cake was put at the bottom to make a bow tie. She iced the head and ears in white with just a little pink inside the ears, then covered the entire face and ears with white shredded coconut. The tie was iced orange or pink and used some jellybeans to outline the tie shape. Two black jellybeans were used as eyes and one for its nose. Then a line of string licorice was used to form its tiny mouth. When us girls grew up, we made the bunny cakes for our children too and my sister-in-law’s learned how to make them as well for their kids. It just seemed to be a family tradition until all of our kids grew up. I made a couple for my granddaughter and I know my sister’s made them for their grandchildren too. Sadly, now of our children have not carried on the tradition, but that happens sometimes now days. I’m hoping maybe our grandchildren will remember the bunny cake and will decide to make it for their children, but that’s gonna be a while. They’re all still in their teens or younger. I think just to remind both my daughter and granddaughter I’ll make one for Easter tomorrow. It will be fun and bring back more sweet memories as I make it.
Happy Easter weekend to everyone!
A beautiful poem AND a post from Ed Ammons. Joy❤️ I don’t remember an Easter egg hunt but I do remember dying eggs and the smell of vinegar. My sister and I would get pretty new dresses and hat. We always wore gloves to church. And Easter morning there would be an orchid corsage for Mother and gardenia corsages for me and my sister from our Dad. He never went to church with us on a Sunday. He did attend dinners occasionally. But at the end of his life he received Jesus as his Lord and Savior. Blessings to all. Have a wonderful Resurrection Sunday.
Good morning, Tipper and Acorns. I have so many fond memories and photos of Easter from my childhood and from raising my kids. Sadly, no grandkids. I love the early morning/sunrise Church Services. I’ll watch several local churches tomorrow on facebook and youtube. I’m so thankful to GOD for sending HIS Son to take our sins away and for Messiah to love us so much to do it. I try every day to live by the commandments written for us to follow. I try to never let my faith in HIM falter. I know HE loves me. I know where I will spend eternity. I hope everyone enjoys Easter with their families and friends. I keep everyone here and up Wilson Holler in my prayers. May you have a blessed sabbath. I love y’all.
I wonder if someone I know and love still has the ½ dozen holly wood eggs I made and sent her. They might be great fun for a couple of grandboys when they get a little older. Or maybe tomorrow?
Ed, I am guessing that is Tipper!
You’ll never know sure!
a,
The mystery lives on!
My cousin, Julie, and I were only 11 months apart and our mom’s always dressed us in matching outfits at Easter. Different colors but identical outfits. The church we attended was directly across the street from our grandparents house and we sure felt like big stuff to walk “home” from Sunday school by ourselves when we were 4 & 5. Didn’t matter grandpa was on the front porch waiting for us lol He’d walk up to the drug store, that was open for a short time on Sundays so that people could buy their Sunday papers (and grandpas could buy a Hershey bar for me and M&Ms for Julie) We’d walk the few blocks home and then grandpa would read the Sunday funnies to us. Grandma would have something delicious smelling cooking for Sunday dinner. My grandpa passed in ’99 and my grandma in ’03 and sadly, far too young, Julie almost a year ago at the end of April but those Sunday morning (especially Easter time!) live on♡
No new clothes at Easter for us growing up and no particular dress up, for guys anyway. I don’t recall an egg hunt at church though that doesn’t mean there weren’t any. We did dye eggs at home and have an egg hunt in the yard. I thought the purpose was to hide them so they couldn’t be found. By trying to do that, I learned a secret was to use unlikely places, even in plain sight, such as above 6 feet high or so. Kinda like the “blind pig and acorn” story, people tend not to look up and especially when all the expectation is that the eggs will be on the ground. I’ve posted this before but my brother and I competed to make the oddest colors. That involved using several colors on one egg. If you’ve never tried it, the best way to describe the results is “Indescribable!” One I recall in particular (unknown whether mine or his) turned out a blue-gray-purple or maybe a gray-purple-blue. Whatever it was, there is no better name for it I reckon. We have blessed rain today! Thank the Lord I got most all the garden planted yesterday. And our azaleas are glorious, the ones the deer let us have anyway. A final note – the resurrection is physically real, not disembodied spirits but sinless flesh and bone that can be felt as Jesus told them. Most of you all I will see for the first time or again “In the Sweet Bye and Bye”. I am beginning to have an impatience for it, which is itself a grace.
What a beautiful Easter card! I’m feeling so nostalgic and grateful this morning. we are all so blessed to have such good memories!
thank you Ed, Gloria and Brenda, I remember Easter egg hunts and the late1960s at Grandma Chester’s house,
Nothing to do with Easter members, but with gardening. I just saw this in an email from Hoss, “Old gardeners never die, they just go to seed.” I think one of the Ron’s wrote a few days ago about gardening being in his blood. That was so true for my father in law.
I enjoyed reading the Easter memories, I love this time of the year with spring coming in with beautiful flowers, moral mushrooms, spending time with family and going to church to celebrate our Savior’s victory over death! Kinda rambling, I know, but I just woke up!
I remember once, that under the fake grass of our Easter basket, my parents put a little golden book. I was so thrilled!
Linda, That is so sweet! It’s the little things that mean so much. Happy Easter everyone.
Easter has always held special memories for me; everything about the Easter weekend is special and always will be.
This year I’ll be visiting Cades Cove for the first time and know it’s gonna be a great day. Happy Easter.
I remember dying our own eggs and usually getting at least a new shirt, there may have not been enough money some years to get pants. I also remember always each year going to the sunrise service at my church. Weather permitting it was always held outside at the church cemetery. We would always get together with our families for a big meal each year and hide the eggs for the children. The few of us left still get together, thanks to my sister in law we are planning on getting together tomorrow after the morning church service. The devil in me makes me remember how funny I thought it was to when I saw some of the hats the lady’s would wear to church when I was a kid back in the late 50’s early 60’s.
Do children still dye eggs? My niece by marriage sells these two piece plastic eggs online each year for Easter, she will put a piece of candy in each one. She pays several people to help her with putting candy in the eggs. Last year 2025 she sold 300,000, that is no misprint! I haven’t heard how many this year. She sells other things online, but these eggs are her main money maker. She will buy the eggs and candy from from some whole sell supplier and have them delivered to her home in large box trucks.