True meaning eclipsed especially for the young… :

Vivid memories of Easter

by Carol Aloysius

“May every face be bright with smiles, We come with messages of hope: Christ arose! Let us be glad”.

These words which we as three year olds lisped many decades ago at our Sunday School classes are perhaps my earliest recollections of Easter. Yet this wonderful message of new hope and salvation from sin given to humankind by Jesus’s Resurrection is being increasingly sidelined for children growing up in an age amidst commercial propaganda and advertisements.

As children growing up in the fifties, the word Easter would immediately conjure up magical tantalising images of Easter Bunnies, Easter Fairies, and of course the tempting array of colourful delicious mouthwatering Easter Eggs!

The Easter eggs we tasted half a century ago, were home made. They were not bought off a counter in a shopping complex where confectionery manufacturers produced them in hundreds, each tasting the same as the other.

In those early childhood days, my mother and our faithful cook took a day off from their usual chores to lovingly fashion each mouthwatering Easter egg. Filled with chocolates and nuts, and wrapped in edible chocolate paper, they were undoubtedly works of art.

Once they had completed their labour of love, my mother and other helpers would craftily and artfully hide them in tiny hand woven baskets under mounds of dried straw, pieces of cut up newspaper or rags of multicoloured hues. The baskets were usually scattered around our garden the previous night or early morning before we woke up. On rainy days, our parents would hide them inside cupboards, under tables, in the attic, or some darkened area in the house.

To find them required enacting a certain ritual. My father would carefully pull out an old whistle, (a souvenir preserved from a Christmas Bon Bon) from his pocket, blow hard on it, so that its shrill sound pierced the air. Woken by the sound our playmates in neighbouring houses would then rush into our house in time for the start what we called, “The biggest hunt for the Year.”

For us children this exciting Easter Hunt, was a much looked forward to annual event., if only because it led us through a maze of hidden trails that led to the treasure trove.

Guided by cryptic signs and clues placed by our parents, which we had to decipher on our own, our treasure hunt took us along winding pathways of our spacious garden, past flowering trees, on to small ponds which we children had carved into the soil to sail our paper boats on a rainy day.

There were dark mysterious places we would never have ventured out to explore on our own.

But the eager support we had from our friends propelled us along.

At times, we found ourselves creeping into the dog kennel where Socks, Spots and Brighty would join in the hunt.

Feathered friends

Sometimes the clues would lead us to an overgrown neglected part of the garden at the back of the house strictly reserved for the dozens of mynahs, kohas and house sparrows that would fly into our garden in large flocks at this time of the year, to roost and nest.

These feathered friends would often get the better of us.

No sooner their sharp eyes spotted the glint of a coloured egg hidden inside a shiny wrapper, they would swoop from their tree top houses to take the pick of the lot, dropping at least a half a dozen eggs in the process.

The trail of rainbow coloured mushy chocolate they left behind them on the ground would soon be lapped up by our cats and dogs, especially Kitty and her five kittens trailing behind her.

Celebrations at school

Our Easter celebrations did not end there. Rather, they would continue for sometimes two or three days after we returned to school. On our return to school after Easter Sunday, our nursery teacher would gather her young charges and send them out on a Easter hunt. Released from the dull task of studying the alphabet and numbers, we would fly out of our then cadjan roofed classroom at Methodist College, Kollupitiya, (later razed to the ground and now a hi-tech splendid science lab) in the manner of captive birds freed from their cages. The entire nursery and primary school would be there to join in the hunt. We were then instructed to go to the grounds at the far end of the school.

These spacious grounds were separated from the Kollupitiya station by just a single wall. When the station master’s whistle signalled the arrival of the train, its shrill sound would clash with another equally shrill whistle-blown by our diminutive Brownie teacher, Ms Swamidoss.

That was to herald the start of our mystery search.

Bunny masks

Wearing bunny masks and tails, we would hop past trees, and several potted plants in the balloon festooned garden, frantically search of the elusive little egg baskets.

Our efforts were always rewarded. Not a child went home disappointed.

Inside the baskets we would find a treasure trove of mouth watering eggs: eggs with marzipan coating, chocolate eggs, sugar eggs, bunny shaped cookies and sticky lollipops, that refused to budge once they stuck onto our gums or between our missing teeth.

Traditions of ancient past

These games played by modern kids living in an increasingly skeptical and cynical world, we soon found out, were by no means invented overnight. Many of them had their roots in the ancient past, where myths and religion were closely woven.

Easter eggs, we learned from our teachers were also called paschal eggs, so called because these special eggs were usually given to celebrate Easter. Why eggs for a religious festival? Because they were a traditional symbol of fertility, and rebirth.

“Early days of Christianity”, an informed adult explained, “Easter eggs symbolised the empty tomb of Jesus.

Fragile though an egg appears to be, unlike the stone in the tomb, a bird hatches from it with life; a reminder that Jesus rose from the grave and that those who believe will also experience eternal life”. We also learned that the custom of the Easter egg, actually had its roots in the Middle East, when the early Christians of Mesopotamia stained eggs red in memory of the blood of Christ shed at His crucifixion.

Much later the Christian church officially adopted the custom, regarding the eggs as a symbol of the resurrection; in A.D. 1610, when Pope Paul V proclaimed the following prayer:

“Bless, O Lord! we beseech thee, this thy creature of eggs, that it may become a wholesome sustenance to thy faithful servants, eating it in thankfulness to thee on account of the resurrection of the Lord.” Today the practice has spread. To all parts of the world.

Real message

Unfortunately, its real significance has been buried beneath a heap of ready made Easter eggs, Easter cards, Easter cakes, and Easter masks and bunnies, which only serve a commercial end.

So what is the real message of Easter? That Christ has risen from the grave. By His Resurrection and triumph over death He has given us hope of eternal life.

Living as we are in a world torn apart from savage wars and violence human life now teeters on a fragile twine.

Our only hope is to reach the light at the end of the tunnel. Difficult and filled with obstacles, disbelief and mistrust is this journey can be, we can finally emerge into the Light at the end of this tunnel of darkness by carrying the message of that first Easter morning, telling the world of a Risen Christ whose death on the Cross wiped out our sins forever.