Tag Archives: easter

Easter Eggs with Satire

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: St. Louis, Missouri
Performance Date: 4/17/2018
Primary Language: English

Informant Info: The informant is an 18-year-old from St. Louis, Missouri. She is currently a freshman studying Public Policy at USC.

Interview Transcript:

Interviewer: With Easter just passing, did you or your family celebrate it? If so, how?

 

Interviewee: Sooooo…. We are not religious, but we still celebrate Easter. What we do is we dye Easter eggs AND then the Easter bunny would hide them in our yard on Saturday. On Easter, we would wake up and have the good ol’ traditional Easter egg hunt. And since we weren’t religious, my parents would sorta make jokes out of it. My mom grew up Catholic, so sometimes she would we toss in prank items, like Jesus band aids. We would then dinner 2pm, which I always thought was early, but hey… home cooked food!

 

Analysis:

Despite not being religious, the informant’s family still celebrates a typical American Easter, primarily in terms of the Easter Eggs. Across the globe, eggs are extremely important symbols of spring, regrowth, and birth. Once again, family bonding still appears to be the most important factor.

Italian Easter

Nationality: Italian
Age: 56
Occupation: Lawyer
Residence: Los Angeles
Primary Language: English

The informant is my father (referred to as FI) who is raised by two Italian parents and was raised in a very traditional Italian household. His parents have been married for 60 years and knew each other in their Italian towns since they were age 10. Easter is a big deal in Italian culture because it is a Catholic holiday.

 

FI: “Easter is, similarly to Christmas, more of week-long celebration than a one day holiday. All of Italy is very involved in events that occur that week. The Pope is out and about leading up to Easter.

On Easter Sunday people dress in green and white. Green and white are two of Italy’s colors but also I think it represents peace, hope, and resurrection. On Easter Sunday there is a lot of food, but also the traditional candies that we eat in America are not eaten. It’s not as much about Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies. I know doves are also released during this time and then everyone heads to church. Sunday mass is a huge part of Easter Sunday.”

I found this to be particularly interesting that these were the traditions my father grew up with because they were definitely not carried down to me/ his children. When I was growing up, Easter was all about the chocolate bunnies and Easter eggs and we rarely went to church. Despite the fact that my father grew up in a traditionally Catholic Italian home, I feel that we were not given a lot of those same traditions because he actually no longer identifies as Catholic. I believe that also now holidays are so commercialized, especially in the United States, so it is hard to celebrate them with many real traditions that aren’t centered around religious ideas or food.

Easter Eggs

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 32
Occupation: Mexican American
Residence: Los Angeles, California
Performance Date: 04/20/2018
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Main Piece: Easter Eggs

The following was a story told to me by a college of mine, ER, and I am DM. The story was about a new tradition created within her family that changed the way her family celebrates Easter.

ER: I am going to tell the transition of my family celebrating Easter. My grandma grew up in a traditional Catholic household where they would go to mass every Easter. In terms of Easter, she would always mention that they would go to mass on like Christmas Easter and that they would be there and kind of celebrating the resurrection of the Lord and so this idea of faith kind of guiding your year of setting the tone for the practices of daily life. When moved to the United States, um they did not go to mass growing up so my grandmother kid of lost this tradition of when she raised my father and his siblings. They did not go to mass other than Christmas and they didn’t really celebrate Easter and that Tradition was lost for about thirty years. My brother and all of my cousins started to having children so it’s kind of another layer of transition in our family holidays where Easter was now more about the kids. Everyone got together on Easter day to celebrate and we would use typically in Mexico these are called cascarones which are confetti filled eggs and so typically you go around smashing them on people’s head kind of a fun little chiste (joke) that you do with each other. My family thinks they are very funny so my cousins always try to get us like when we were unaware. Two years ago, bought the color dye from the color runs on Amazon and filled the eggs with the dye. So every year we have about 500-1000 Easter eggs that we break on each others heads. We have this huge cascarone fight. It has been interesting seeing the change transition from going to a typical conservative formal Easter celebration to nowhere really it’s just a day to spend with family and focus on each other and that time together.

Background/Context:

The participant is thirty-two years old. She is a Mexican American high school English 10 teacher. She told me about how her Easter evolved from a traditional Catholic Easter to a new tradition.  

DM: Where/who did they learn it from?

ER: It is just something that happened organically over time

DM: Why is this tradition important to you?

ER: I think part of that we are going over the typical norm of like society and just being typical Latino like you go to church that was the obligation that you had to do to now like making it our own and kind of making it what works for us.

Analysis/ My Thoughts:

I think this is a perfect example of how one thing changes over time but still the same thing. The tradition of celebrating Easter has stayed the same, but the way they Easter is celebrating is different. There are multiple ways these generations celebrated Easter day. 

You can find the story of the eggs here:

Rentería, Melissa. “’Confetti-Filled Eggs’ a Tradition.” San Antonio Express-News, San Antonio Express-News, 21 Apr. 2011, www.mysanantonio.com/sacultura/conexion/article/Confetti-filled-eggs-a-tradition-1345157.php. This article talks more in depth about the history of where these cascarones came from as well as how popular they are today. They mention how there are stores where they just sell these cascarones.

 

Naciemento de JesusChristo

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 20
Occupation: Program Coordinator
Residence: Arkansas
Performance Date: 4/21/17
Primary Language: Spanish
Language: English

During Christmas time, the whole family gets together right before eating dinner. In this family ceremony, everybody gets a Jesus looking treat, usually something the mom of the family makes, and everybody then kisses Jesus on the forehead and then eats the head. It’s to symbolize Jesus and the Holy Spirit being in you. This always happens between the hours of 2am-3am after Christmas Eve. The time is important, because that is the time in which it connects to the “witch hour” where Evil is supposedly the strongest.

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Eloisa is a Michoacan born lady who has lived in Arkansas since she has been a little girl. She used to be really religious, but after being opened up to human rights, and mostly women rights, she has taken a step back and tried to analyze everything to decide on what she can really identify as part of her.

Paschal Greeting – Greek Orthodox

Nationality: American
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Dana Point, California
Performance Date: 4/10/17
Primary Language: English

“Because I’m Greek Orthodox, we have a service the night before Easter. What we do is, the priest turns off all the lights in the church and then we have candles. And we say ‘Christ has risen and truly he has risen’ in like eight different languages. ‘Khristos Anesti. Alithos Anesti. Christ has risen. Truly he has risen.’* and all these different forms of languages for about an hour and a half. It’s just a symbolized of I think inclusivity. We just wear our church clothes. Like my mom always says, ‘Dress as though you’re going to God’s house.’ Everyone is in more ‘happier’ colors since it’s Easter”

My informant is a member of the Greek Orthodox Church. She is deeply connected to her church and still practices her religion faithfully. I thought it was interesting to hear how her family celebrates Easter because I personally am Presbyterian, which is a branch of Christianity. We only celebrate Palm Sunday and Good Friday prior to Easter. I have never heard of a celebration being held the night before Easter. This service is referred to as the Paschal Greeting in Greek Orthodox custom. I really liked the idea of chanting “Christ has risen and truly he has risen” in multiple languages as a representation of inclusivity. However, I will admit having to do that for an hour and half seems extremely tedious. My informant on the other hand seemed enthusiastic about the ritual, proving her patience and loyalty to God.