Tisket a tasket

For the first time, here's a picture of our very own Easter basket, sitting in the church on the sanctuary steps in front of the altar -- that's a very attractive yet serviceable carpeting, isn't it? -- at the Easter Basket Blessing on Saturday afternoon.

This is our fourth year of doing this traditional blessing at our parish, but only the first year I've known how to work a digital camera. Duh.
Anyway, our basket held the following items: the ham, pictured in its inelegant plastic wrapping at the far left, our painted Easter eggs, the Honey/Oatmeal bread I baked, a blue container of salt, a candle and a bottle of chardonnay from Cupcake Vineyards, all because I couldn't resist the simple yet luscious elegance of their label. I hope the wine is as delectable as their packaging. I'll keep you posted. And don't forget to take note of my lovely embroidered Easter basket cover, which I bought on e-Bay for eight dollars. You don't often get a family heirloom for such a low price.

The blessing of the baskets was a great success this year, with about twenty families taking part -- last year, I think it was maybe about six. One fellow I'd never seen before came puffing in with an Easter basket the size of a baby dolphin just as Father was getting ready to do the blessing; the man paused in embarrassment as Father, who had just raised his arm with that holy-water-sprinkler-thingy, lowered it down again and said, "C'mon, bring it up. I was just getting started."

The man, chagrined, came forward and plunked his basket down on the floor as the rest of us looked interestedly on, wondering what on earth he had in the thing. It was heeeyooooge. Maybe an entire roasted hog? A fifty pound bag of salt? Whatever it was, it nearly had him knackered, and he stood up, back creaking a little, and wiped a sheen of sweat off his brow and apologetically scuttled into a pew.

The whole blessing takes about fifteen minutes, which is kind of a short time for the half-hour-there-half-hour-back we have in travel time, especially since I was in the throes of misery and had to sit in a seat that allowed me a direct line to the bathroom. Sorry to keep mentioning that in all these posts, but it's important to remember just how lousy I felt or the fact that I had an honest-to-goodness healing about five hours later won't be the momentous occurrence it truly is. Just tell yourself that I was in the bathroom all day powdering my nose. Maybe that will help.

The painting of the eggs

Up until this year, the girls and I have dyed hard-cooked Easter eggs in the traditional manner, you know, with the Paas dye you buy at the grocery store that either does or does not require white vinegar: I never can remember which until we get home and discover that we've no white vinegar, necessitating a return trip to the grocery.

This year, we turned to a more traditional craft, which is that of blowing all the eggy stuff out of the shell (and if you feel about eggs the way I do, you'll understand what a HERO I am for doing this craft with my children) and then painting the shell. The girls were all gung-ho for the painting, but no so much on the egg-blowing. They insisted that I should be the lucky one who should have the treat of emptying all those shells, but I flat-out refused, tartly saying a few words about the many hours of labor I went through and the possibility of an untimely aneurysm and they eventually gave in, but not without a lot of eeeeeewww-ing and eeeyuuuuuuck-ing.

I chose simple pastel craft paints with a nice metallic gold for the painting of religious symbols and we had a lot of fun sitting at the dining room table yesterday afternoon and crafting away. Now that the eggs are completely dry, they need to be treated this afternoon with the glossy fixative spray I bought so that they can be carefully placed in our Easter basket and taken to the church tomorrow.

If you want to see some really nice painted eggs, check out these pretties, done in the fine old Polish tradition, and these cuties, done in a more American primitive style. Both are just lovely and, er....better than ours.

Good Friday - The Stations of the Cross

It's been a busy Holy Week for us here as we make our preparations -- both solemn and joyful -- for Easter. Schoolwork was frenzied on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday as we wrapped things up to be ready for spring break, which started yesterday.



The Triduum -- Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday --is one of the best times of the year to be a Catholic, and that's high praise coming from someone who thinks that every single day of the year is the best day to be a Catholic. Anyway, the churches all seem to be open and there's always something going on: evening prayer, rosaries, holy hours, the beginning of the Divine Mercy novena today, and my personal favorite, the Stations of the Cross.



The girls and I are all spiffed up ready to head out in an hour or so to go to our parish's Good Friday services, which include the Stations, a communion service (since Good Friday is the only day of the year when there's no Mass in any Catholic church), the Veneration of the Cross and the beginning of the aforesaid Divine Mercy novena. It's a blessed day. Solemn and sorrowing, yet somehow a-quiver with anticipation of what we know is coming: the grand and beautiful celebration of the resurrection of Our Lord at the Easter Vigil.



After the services are over at the church, we're off to the grocery to finish buying things for our Easter basket, which will be present at the church for blessing promptly at 1:30 tomorrow. That completed, we'll go home and count the hours until it's time to return to the church at 7:30 for music rehearsal, with the Easter Vigil Mass starting at 8:30.



Great, happy, lovely excitement and joyfulness await us. Jesus is the cause of our joy.

At the ready

What you're seeing there, high atop my kitchen cabinets, up near the TOTALLY COBWEB FREE ceiling, is our family Easter basket, patiently awaiting Holy Saturday and our parish's Easter Basket Blessing, when Aisling, as the tallest of our group of McKinney females, will climb on a chair and lift it down with a carefully wielded broom handle. Last year, the broom handle wasn't weilded carefully enough by Meelyn, and the basket plunged straight down and whacked her right in the head, which did not make her feel very blessed.

Here's a link to the instructions for assembling a traditional Easter basket that I posted a couple of years back. This is actually a custom of the Catholic and Orthodox Christians in eastern Europe, but it is such a lovely and meaningful practice -- or maybe I should say devotion? -- that we were more than pleased to adopt it for use in this American home.

This year, I have something new for our Easter basket, and that is a hand-embroidered cover for it -- also part of the traditional basket assembly -- and you cannot believe how beautiful and inexpensive it was. When it comes in the mail, I'll be sure to take a picture of it.

Also this year, we'll probably go in the same direction we've gone in other years, stuffing a small ham, a bottle of wine, some salt, a loaf of bread, some decorated eggs and a holy candle inside; you can click on that link above to read about the significance of those things. That all makes for a heavy Easter basket, burgeoning with Easter joy. And this year, I'll actually be able to take a picture at the church of everyone's Easter basket - in the past few years, there have been about six or seven families who have participated, and I hope even more will be there this year.

Anyway, with the weather so soft and spring-like these past few days, I can't help but keep glancing up there at that basket in anticipation of the happiness to come, which is part of what Lent is all about.