Wandering Through The Land Of Nod.

Happy Easter! Memories of Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, real holidays (holy days) when everything is transformed, finally everything comes together and all the waiting is worth it. Childhood lessons in death and resurrection, remembered with much gratitude.

The day dawned bright and early on Easter Day, when everything was made new.  The long waiting was over and the clean house on Serlby Rise felt warm and welcoming.

On the polished, dark wood sideboard stood a line of chocolate eggs, wrapped in bright foil and adorned with satin bows.

Why don’t Easter eggs have bows around them anymore?

A special treat was one from my godmother, which had my name iced onto the chocolate.  How magical was that?

Breakfast was boiled eggs.  We all recognised our own egg because dad had drawn cartoons of our faces on them!

Later, we would eat roast dinner and for tea there’d be cakes which mam had baked.  That day was a feast day, a real holiday (holy day), for Jesus was alive and everything was made new. 

For me, even better than chocolate eggs, personalised boiled eggs, roast dinner and cakes were my new shoes.  Easter day was the day I wore my new brown sandals with their lovely leathery smell, shiny buckles and crepe soles.  Whatever the weather, this was the day for summer shoes, which I would carry on wearing until September.

I’d known about them for weeks and would open their box, unwrap the tissue paper and delight in their beautiful newness.

When we’d eaten our breakfast, and were washed and dressed as smartly as possible, mam took me to church.  There, a miracle had occurred.  On Good Friday, I’d been glad to leave the dark, sad, tomblike space to get out into the sunshine, but on Easter Day we walked into dazzling light.  The scent of flowers and beeswax hit us first and then the sight of Arum lilies, candlelight and polished wood, brass and silver.

Everything was clean, fresh and bright.  The contrast couldn’t have been starker and that childhood lesson has taught me more about death and resurrection than anything I learnt at theological college.

I am so grateful to the women (I assume they were all women) who worked so hard in church to make Easter so real and meaningful.

In our house, the holiday (holy day) didn’t end at bedtime on Easter Sunday.  Easter Monday was a day for packing up a picnic and getting into the countryside.  It felt and still feels like a very welcome rule that we have to be outside, enjoying spring and new life, whatever the weather and happily for me, it always involved Hot Cross Buns.  That’s a rule I’m happy to carry on keeping!

That’s what I’ll be doing this Easter Monday. 

What about you?  What memories do you have of Easter?

However you celebrate Easter and whatever it means to you, have a very happy and blessed time.

Wander well,

Mandy.