Mar 26, 2010

Flashback Friday



Linda at Mocha with Linda has started a meme called Flashback Friday! Here's her prompt for this week:
What was Easter like when you were little? For example, did you receive a basket with toys and candy? Was the Easter Bunny part of your family's celebration? Did your family integrate both secular and spiritual aspects of the day? Did you dye Easter eggs. . . .and did your family eat them afterwards? Did you usually get a new outfit? (Post a picture if you have one!) Does any Easter stand out particularly? You might also share how your Easter today is similar or different to your childhood?
Easter when I was little was really more secular than anything. I never made the connection between what I saw as Easter and the Resurrection of Christ until I was much older.

But most of my early Easters were spent at my Granny's house in the beautiful hill country of Texas. My favorite memories of all those Easters are encompassed in one thing: bluebonnets.




I used to take a basket out in the meadow and pick as many bluebonnets as I could fit in it. Now, if you pull over on the side of the road and try to do that, you'll get heckled and honked at by drivers on the highway. Rumor has it you can even get arrested for it! (at least that's what they say *wink*) 

Bottom Line: You're flat not supposed to pick bluebonnets on the Texas highway; you're taking away from everybody else's enjoyment of them when you do that.

But if you're on private land, now that's a diff'rnt story. And my Granny's land had more bluebonnets than dirt during the spring time, so propagating them wasn't really an issue.

So I would pick me a big basket full and take them back to Granny's house and make designs on the back porch with them. I would lay them out in the shape of Easter baskets, bunny rabbits, eggs (decorated with other wildflowers like buttercups and indian blankets):



Then the Easter bunny would come and fill the "baskets" I had made for all the family...each person got their own basket. My basket always included these staples: hollow chocolate bunny, a ceramic Easter "knick-knack," and a stuffed animal. I adored stuffed animals.

My other favorite memories include many walks down that old country road wearing my new Easter dress (Grandma was always so faithful to get me a new dress for Easter). I truly enjoyed the birds singing and the bright sun warming my face as I walked down Granny's driveway, which had to be a half mile long.

What a beautiful place she had.

As for now, we don't really buy into all the bunny hype for Easter. I think it rather takes away from the point of the celebration. I usually wake the boys for church by saying, "Happy Resurrection Day!" For which I always get a sleepy smile.

We don't do Easter baskets anymore, since we don't have bluebonnets here, but we usually do dye eggs a day or so before and then have an egg hunt in the yard. I don't usually buy the hollow bunnies, but last year I did find some chocolate crosses, which I was thrilled to see and buy for my boys. And we may not give many material gifts to each other, but we gift the gift of ourselves to each other.

After church, we usually spend the rest of the day cooking brisket, beans, and potato salad, some kind of yummy dessert (like banana pudding), and drinking sweet tea. And after the egg hunt is done, we find all the "Resurrection Eggs" out of our baskets, and go through them one at a time retelling the story of Jesus' death on the Cross and Resurrection on that blessed Easter morning.

Just special family time to celebrate a special family Holy-day.

What about you? Do you have any special Easter memories? What do you do for Easter to stay focused on the true meaning? Be sure and check out Linda's and others' answers at Mocha with Linda!

13 comments:

myletterstoemily said...

what a lovely post about sweet
bluebonnet memories. you seem
to remember them more than the
candy or easter bunny!

pretty much the same for us. . .
minus the bluebonnets.

now for my children, i planned quite
an extravaganza. (see easter at my
place or something like that :)

Andrea said...

Beautiful Easter memories....thank you for sharing!
andrea

Skoots1moM said...

what fun that would have been in the blue bells...beautiful!!
enjoyed your sharing :)

bp said...

I enjoyed your Easter memories. My son is having a Texas unit at school and he's told me you canNOT pick bluebonnets. I remember saying the same thing when I was little and learned that.

Have a great weekend.
Bethany

Michelle said...

How sweet! I loved Easter when I was little. It was more secular than Christian. Well...it wasn't Christian AT ALL!

Now we don't do anything. If you have familiarized yourself with some old posts of mine...you'll find we don't do Christmas either. Obviously (OK....for some reason...I'm having a HORRIBLE time spelling ob-vi-ously. I've respelled it like 15 times.)Anyways, we haven't found the balance in the secular views and the pagan background and how we can celebrate it to glorify Christ. Let me emphasize WE. WE do this and don't judge other Christians who have found a way to balance it.

What a perfect and peaceful picture you painted!

Mocha with Linda said...

Love the bluebonnets! Yeah, we always heard it's against the law to pick them but finally discovered it's just highly frowned upon and bad etiquette.

Robin Lambright said...

Someone elese shared about blue bonnets and spring this past week too, it may have even been our Flashback host, but I'm just too old to remember that far back in the week.

The bluebonnets look amazing, what fun it must have been to pick them by the arm load.

Have a wonderful Easter season.

Blessings
R

Edie said...

You know I love you my kindred-hearted friend. :)

We were secular in everything growing up. I had no idea what Easter was about. It meant easter bunny and egg hunts.

I would really love to replace the plastic eggs with plastic crosses and a tomb. Turn egg hunts into a hunt for the tomb with the crown of Life. Wish I had the money to make that happen. Do you think Christians would buy them over the eggs?

Walmart has some stuffed animal lambs I'm picking up for the girls this year. I have some cross candy molds that I make them chocolate cross lollipops with. They always expect to see Christ in what I give them. For that I am so very thankful.

My oldest grandgirl is getting baptized on Easter. Yay!

Debbie said...

Bluebonnets are one of the things I miss most about my homeland Texas. Like your post....
Debbie

Barbara H. said...

What wonderful memories! And i love the traditions with your family now.

Tanna said...

Beautiful memories and even more beautiful memories that you are creating for your family now. Your photos are gorgeous.

Laura said...

This is a beautiful post of Easter memories.
What a great idea for a meme.

I need to remember this for this coming Friday.

Thanks for coming by my blog-
Cascarones are great because you don't have to boil the eggs and you can save the raw eggs to bake something.

Laura

Merrie said...

What a great heritage (legacy) to have in Texas. Most of us have never been able to experience the fields of bluebonnets and open spaces.
I also am with you about Resurrection Sunday. I try to stay away from the candy. I do have plastic eggs that we hide for the grandkids.
I love this season!
Enjoyed your post!