Tag Archives: easter

The Roast

Nationality: American
Age: ~70
Occupation: Retiree
Residence: Altadena, CA
Performance Date: April 8, 2012
Primary Language: English

The informant recounted the legend on Easter in the context of telling family stories. She acknowledges that it isn’t specifically tied to her family but could be from anyone’s family.

Story:
A mother is teaching her daughter how to cook a ham, and when she cuts the end off, and puts it aside, and puts the ham in the oven and bakes it. [The informant mimes these actions as she tells the story.]

And the daughter says: ‘Why did you do that?’

And she says: ‘Oh, I don’t know, because my mother did.’

So, the daughter goes to the grandma and she says: ‘Grandma, why did you do that?’

And she says: ‘I don’t know, because my mother did.’

And so, she goes to the great-grandma and she says: ‘Grandma, why did you do that?’

And she says: ‘Cuz I had a small pan!’

[Everyone at the table chuckles.]

Me: And when would you tell that story?

Informant: To your granddaughter? I don’t know. When you’re eating ham? [laughs] When someone asks “why?”.

 

Analysis:

This exists both as a general funny story to tell to the family but also as a piece of meta-folklore explaining how traditions come to be. It also follows the rule of three from Olrik’s epic laws. The daughter has to ask three mothers to get her answer about the tradition.

Advanced Easter Egg Hunt

Nationality: American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: April 25th, 2012
Primary Language: English

“So, my mom is an artist, she’s a painter, and my dad did, um like a lot of writing and stuff, he’s like an English dude. He’s American. Anyways. Um, for Easter, we would, we would have Easter Egg hunts, my sister and I. And um, it started off, we’d come, we’d come downstairs and there’d be these Easter eggs, and you’d open it, and it’d be a scrap of paper that would be cut in a weird shape, and on one side would be like, a part of a drawing, but you don’t know what the drawing is, and on the other side, would be, um, a clue. A poem or a limerick my dad made. That would lead you to, it would be a clue to like, find the next egg, in a different part of the house. And so you’d read the clues and try to find each egg, until you, you finally find the basket. And each of these papers, its the poem on one side and the drawing on the other, and once you got the basket, you’d have all the pieces, you assemble them and you tape it together, and then you’d flip it over and it’d be, like my mom would have, um, she’d uh, she’d have drawn like an Easter themed drawing, like one of them was like me from my senior yearbook photo, but with bunny ears drawn on, and she, um, also drew like the Scream, but with like bunny ears. It’d be a clever take on Easter themes.”

 

This tradition interests me, because it takes the candy, which is usually what Easter is about for kids, and makes it secondary. The riddle clues the source’s dad wrote are almost a sneaky way of making Easter Egg Hunts educational. It is also a way for both of the source’s parents to pass down their love for the arts to their children, and it worked, as the source never mentioned candy once when talking about the Easter Egg Hunt, she remembers her parents for being artists, and taking time to create something for her and her sister.

Polish Pierogi Recipe

Nationality: Polish American
Age: 83
Occupation: Avocado Farmer
Residence: Temecula, CA
Performance Date: 4/8/12
Primary Language: English

The informant is 83 years old. He is Polish, but was born in Michigan.

Over Easter Brunch, my informant told me about his own Easter tradition that he used to celebrate with his family:

“Every Easter, we used to make Pierogis. These were somewhat of a delicacy for my family and they were more expensive to make than anything else my family usually had to eat. Pierogis are made with cabbage and pork, kind of like a Polish ravioli. We would only ever be able to make them for special occasions, so we chose to make them for our Easter Meal.”

Recipe:

Dough:

2 cups flour, sifted

1 egg

½ cup lukewarm water

½ cup milk

1 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. melted butter

In a large bowl, beat all ingredients. Add additional flour to firm if needed. Roll out and double. Cut into ½ inch circles.

 

Filling:

1lb. of pork

3 carrots

1 leek

1 celery stalk

1 onion

Butter or oil for frying

Parsley leaves

2 eggs

Salt & pepper

Wash beef and put in salted water. Cook, until the meat softens. Peel and cut into small strips. Throw vegetables into stock with meat and leave gently cooking for 30 minutes. While the meat is being cooked with vegetables peel onion and cut it into cubes. Fry onion on the frying pan with the addition of butter, until lightly browned. Take the meat out of stock and tear into smaller pieces. Add fried onion and mix everything. Grind the mixture of onion and meat in a meat mincer. Chop parsley leaves up and add to stuffing. Break two raw eggs into a meat mixture. Add salt and pepper. Mix. Season to taste. Arrange stuffing on pierogi dough circles and carefully glue the dough, forming pierogi. Cook pierogi in salted water. After floating to the surface cook until become soft. Then sift out. Pan-fry the cooked pierogi. Use butter or sunflower oil. Fry pierogi, until browned on both sides. Serve.

Jewish Easter Egg Hunt

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: April 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: None

“So, in my family, holidays are a big deal, and we are not very religious one way or another, but we do, um, partake in several, I guess, Christian holidays, and Easter is one of the big ones. Um, however, we have this Jewish friend, who, um, had never experienced Easter before, um, and so, she, we decided to invite her to Easter one year so she could experience her first ever Easter and so she came over and um, we did the typical things like dyeing Easter eggs and having Easter dinner. But, we decided to twist our traditions to uh accommodate for her Jewishisms. So she told us about this tradition she used to practice as a child. It’s like this little stale piece of bread, it’s like matzah, and you hide it. She used to do this as a child. It’s called the afikomen. So, yea, I guess it’s a Jewish tradition to hide the matzah and be like, hey, kids, go find the afikomen. And whichever little Jewish lad finds the afikomen gets a reward.

So then, we decided to kind of mix the two traditions because finding an afikomen is very much like finding an Easter egg, so, um, my parents, along with hundreds of Easter eggs, hid an afikomen, and whoever found it got twenty dollars. We, of course, all expected the Jew to find the afikomen, but the first time it was my brother, a non-Jew, who found it. So now we do this every year… we hide an afikomen with the Easter eggs.”

 

The informant’s conflation of two different religions’ traditions is an interesting example of how folkloric traditions can blend together and change. The informant’s family found a common thread between the traditional Christian practice of hunting for hidden eggs on Easter and the traditional Jewish practice of hiding and finding a piece of matzah on Passover. In an effort to make their Jewish friend more comfortable and to learn about Jewish culture, the informant’s family blended together these two traditions.

However, the informant’s family took the search for the afikomen out of context. Traditionally, the children search for the afikomen at a Passover seder, and there are multiple reasons and explanations for this practice. Some say that the tradition of hiding and searching for the afikomen is an effort to keep the children awake throughout the seder, which can be a very long, traditional meal, sometimes lasting for hours. Searching for the afikomen can keep the kids occupied while the adults conduct the seder. Another explanation for the purpose of the afikomen is that seeking the matzah symbolizes future redemption for the Jewish people. However, in the case of the Jewish Easter egg hunt, the afikomen is used merely as a symbolic gesture— a lone Jewish artifact hidden among plastic Christian relics, but, ultimately, meant to serve the same purpose as the Easter eggs (you find something and you are rewarded for it.)

Custom

Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: April 2007
Primary Language: English

“Easter Celebration”

Jennifer Smith is a third generation English- American who was born and raised in the valley area surrounding the city of Los Angeles. Her mother is from Miami, Florida and her father is from Los Angeles, California. She spent three years at Bennington College in Vermont.

Jennifer says that, for the most part, her family has always celebrated Easter in the same fashion since she can remember. Her mother’s parents celebrated Easter in the same way and the tradition has passed down now to Jennifer through her mother.

On the night before Easter, everyone decorates hardboiled eggs by using specially prepared colored-dyes. The eggs are then hid in secret places by the parents, during the middle of the night while the child is asleep. In the morning, the children wake up as early as possible in order to start the festivities. The children hunt for the eggs that the parents have hidden. For every egg that a child finds, he/she is given a present in exchange by the parents. For example, Jennifer says that this year she found six eggs and therefore received six presents. The presents can range in size and quality. Jennifer says that usually the majority of the presents are relatively small, such as a basket of jelly- beans. After the children give up on finding all the gifts, it is now time for the parents to retrieve the eggs that were not found. It is important that the parents keep a list of where exactly they hid each egg, because a hardboiled egg is not something one wants to keep in his house for an extended period of time, as it progressively rots. After the parents find the remaining eggs, the family bakes a cake in the shape of a bunny. After the cake is baked, the family then invites relatives to come over and enjoy a home-cooked Easter dinner. Easter dinner usually consists of lamb, ham, and steak. The side dishes for the dinner include mashed potatoes, asparagus, fruit salad, and homemade bread. After the dinner, the children will play various games with the eggs such as an egg on spoon race.

According to Jennifer, the Easter tradition in her family is not a matter of remembering an important religious occasion, but rather it is a time wherein the family reunites and presents one another with gifts in order to express appreciation. I think that this is an interesting celebration, as it is seen to show no religious connotation yet it is held on the day in which many people celebrate the Resurrection of Christ. It is interesting how this celebration focuses around the secular aspects of the Easter holiday in the United States.