Much has changed with Easter traditions, and the world for this senior citizen
A COLUMN By Kathryn Ross
Last weekend brought back a lot of memories from Easters of yesteryear back in the 1950s and 1960s.
Wellsville, the world, childhood, and just about everything else in the world were very different back then.
Maybe not so much the country. We had just fought in war against Communism in Korea and the government was sending advisors into Southeast Asia and Vietnam, where Mao Zedong was making a footprint. As we know that didn’t turn out so good for us.
In school we were learning to climb under our desks and shield our eyes in case of nuclear attack, along with learning cursive writing, spelling (which you may have noticed I’m not very good at) vocabulary, memorizing the times tables and figuring out long division.
It was amazing what they thought those old wooden and metal desks would do. I wonder now why our teachers were instructed to make us do those drills. Was it all just a way of appeasing the public? Because God knows there was very little chance of surviving a nuclear attack? It just goes to show that our government has always been manipulative and duplicitous. But all that is not what I started to write about.
Easter was a big holiday in my parent’s house, second only to Christmas. Of course, I was a good little Catholic girl back then. Our family attended Mass together every Sunday.
I always say nobody is better at indoctrinating people than the Catholic church, Nearly 70 years after the fact, I still get a twinge of guilt when I don’t attend Mass on Sunday.
At Easter time my mother dressed my sister and I up in frilly, pink, yellow, and baby blue dresses, with crinolines, and bows and flowery hats and patent leather shoes from the Triangle Shoe Store.
I’m still trying to picture where that was located on Main Street. Was it where the Hairdressers now is or farther down the street? I’ll have to look it up.
I vaguely remember the inside with its tall shelves of shoe boxes and colorful seats for kids and the X-ray machine where you could actually see the bones in your feet.
Today there’s one of those old X-ray machines on display in the Nathaniel Dike Museum, which will be opening on Wednesdays in May. Drop in and see it and the other treasures in the museum.
I don’t recall a time when I believed that a giant rabbit hid colorful eggs around the yard for Pat and I to find. I guess that it wasn’t that much of a thing back then. I had Easter baskets, but it was just on the table when I got up on Easter morning. It wasn’t jam packed with toys and candy the way they are today. There were red, yellow, green, purple, and black jellybeans hidden in colorful “grass” a couple of cream eggs and a chocolate Easter Bunny.
I read recently that over 90-percent of the population eat the ears of chocolate bunnies first.
For me the big thing was going to my grandparents’ house. Every year Pat and I walked down his driveway dressed in our Easter finery while he filmed it. Those old eight-millimeter films were around for years, until the 72 flood when my grandfather’s house flooded. It was a tradition that continued for years when my father lined up his grandchildren in the driveway and filmed them with his video camera.
My great uncle Paul and his latest wife along with my aunt, uncle and cousins would gather around my grandfather’s table for Easter dinner. The only thing different from Christmas dinner, was the ham instead of turkey and there was always spaghetti. My great uncle brought his Easter pie. It was a dandelion and egg concoction that I never developed a taste for but the adults considered a delicacy.
Today the way families celebrate Easter isn’t like it was. You can argue if it’s better or worse and complain about the decline of family values, but what good will it do? You can only do what you can do. Make your own traditions and do your own thing. Maybe that’s not a big family gathering with grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins or even, a giant Easter Bunny. Maybe it’s just a day to be together with kids or friends, or with your dog or cat.
Let’s hope it is a time of peace and hope, regardless of what is happening in today’s world, unless it’s basketball.
Kathryn Ross is a native Wellsville writer and community activist who pens a weekly column for the Wellsville Sun. You can reach her anytime, kathr_2002@yahoo.com
