Easters with Chocolate
We had no idea our parents had never opened their front door to find a little something from the Easter Bunny. We did not realize they did not know about jelly beans, or marshmallow chicks covered in bright, colorful sugars. They had no idea about the intricacies of chocolate bunnies and whether it was better to get a child a solid or hollow one. Our parents as children would never have gotten half the amount of candy we opened our door to on Easter morning— not in a whole year.
“We never grew up with baskets!” I remember them shaking their heads and smiling as the elderly neighbors beamed with pride at the masterpieces they had secretly prepared for us on their porch the days before. We heard those words but we didn’t quite register what they meant. We took it to mean they had boring Easters where they were sad all day after church, never realizing just how different but beautiful their holidays were. As our neighbors and my American-born aunt nodded approvingly and our parents nodded in a kind of amazement at how much was available in this land of plenty, we just asked permission for what we could chomp.
Sometimes we heard jokes about bunnies and how someone in the family would like to make sauce from them. The older people thought that was funny, while we kids didn’t quite get the joke.
We the generation born in the USA colored our eggs with dyes from the store. We learned about egg hunts sponsored by different community groups and urged our parents to take us to anything that didn’t conflict with the “real” Easter schedule. When we did all these things for the first time, so did our parents, and my mother would shake her head over how many eggs would be used for events leading up to Easter. I think she might have been horrified by the idea of placing clean food into bushes only to grab them back out.
Instead of criticizing this new world we were in, she would gently explain to us how her mother and all the other women of the village would collect their eggs from the chickens for weeks leading up to Easter — that in fact they had less eggs, not more, until Easter came. Nothing in their village homes came from the store and everything had to be planned, budgeted and appreciated. Again, we looked at our parents with a kind of naive pity: “They had no treats at all.” I remember thinking.
They did in fact have treats at Easter in the form of our sweet Easter bread, Pugace (poo-got-seh) or Pogace (Po-gotcha) if you’re being more proper. The bright, fluffy dough of the Easter bread was the result of so much more than the recipe and it was incredibly tasty. The rising dough, yellow with yolks, marked the skills of each baker and so much more. In villages, every egg was valuable and every scoop of sugar was precious, especially after a long winter. Everything the family needed to buy in the store meant more time fishing, or in the field, and so every bread was the result of an entire family effort. Every little Easter bread and every homemade treat was a part of living the way they had for generations, with humility and through joint effort. It took a whole family to get that pugace baked.
With a constant thread of sacredness woven into their lives, the average village home held its traditions in the kitchen and it held its traditions within the community. Before celebration came contemplation and services at church. Before anyone got a piece of the precious Easter treasures there were days of solemn prayer. Of course we had some of that too, but it was always somehow disturbed by all the luxuries we had and all the other distractions of television and radio. We knew Easter was about death and resurrection but we hardly felt the harshness of winter cold, or even knew what a lamb, sacrificial or not, looked, sounded or smelled like alive. We had books and television specials, but we didn’t have as much nature or group excitement around preparing the house and the meal.
Somehow, as the flavor and style of Easter changed for us as a family, and although some of it was lost in translation, we knew that the core of Easter was about sacrifice and trust more than it was about candy. By the time I was in college we learned to hide the whole lamb from any visiting friends because the look on their eyes as I proudly displayed the guest of honor for the next day’s meal did in fact turn one of my roommates vegetarian. We were suburban by address, and my parents were citizens by then, but we were still pretty much foreign in ways we didn’t realize.
Eventually every Easter would end, the table cleared of the bones of the guest of honor, the linens all spot-treated for spilled wine and put in the laundry. I remember how we wanted more chocolate and how we got tired of the golden bread with its sugary coating until we got older. Back then we wanted more sugar than taste and we wanted all the shiny things that said we were American kids. Years go by and our perspective changes. Now, I can get chocolate anytime, anywhere, and so it doesn’t do that much for me at Easter. Jellybeans, ok, those are a soft spot, but still I can buy them or some variation pretty much anytime of the year if I look online.
The thing I can’t simply buy is that bread, the one that my mother pounded and rested, the one she filled with egg yolks and flour in proportions that were never exact. “Everyone is different, depending on your eggs, your flour, even the weather!” That was what my mother taught me, and what she still says today. She makes that Pugace today like a master. She makes it for us, her grown children, for her grandkids and for all the rest of us who are lucky enough to spend the holidays together. She makes them into braids and into tiny little bread chicks as well as the traditional round ones that she marks with a cross cut into the dough. Every Easter she never fails to show the youngest children how the cross is there for a reason.
Nowadays she freezes one or two breads if we’re lucky, and then they get defrosted and eaten after a special meal or turned into the most delicious french toast you’ve ever had. The taste, the smell, the color of that yellow bread is part of our hearts the way nothing else has been because year after year the conversation always came around, “Oh, my mother, your grandmother, she had to save eggs for weeks to make this.” That stuck with us, and it helped us build the story of our family year after year. We learned little things along the way, like that the Easter meal would be taken for a blessing to the church before it was served. We learned and we listened, but we didn’t quite live it.
The depth of Easter was somehow present and somehow a ghost as the church changed and modern life made it harder to celebrate the “Holy Week” ahead of the big day. It wasn’t until we got older that we began to understand the differences between growing up suburban and growing up in a village. We had no idea that people who worked their fields could decide to attend services in a way that workers who punched clocks didn’t. We didn’t realize that to gain so much, we lost some things along the way, and that holding onto the essential character of sacredness in life was at the core of the struggle between all these traditions and the need to make ends meet. This wasn’t about bunnies versus bread, this was about not getting too busy to remember that God was in everything, including the seasons, including those days when we talked about suffering and strength. Today everyone wants to resurrect like Jesus, but not everyone is willing to suffer to get there.
You know, Baba and Dido didn’t have chocolate bunnies at Easter!” we find ourselves saying these dayswith giggles, waiting for our parents to chime in— “We didn’t have anything!” Then we adults all laugh because we know how lucky we are to have each other, generation to generation, telling our stories. Love and renewal are the message of Easter and by sharing the old traditions and the new ways we keep up our links to those simpler times, to those universal truths of sacrifice, planning and changing seasons.
The sunshine of spring, the joy of seeing children smile is what stays with us. It doesn’t matter if the Easter treat is a slice of rich bread with sugar, or a basket of treats from the finest shop-- the satisfaction in giving and celebrating small delights is what endures. Over time and places, what matter is that sense of reverence for our lives and for the richness we receive in giving ourselves over to life’s difficulties so we truly can appreciate the small moments of bliss— and if you’re lucky enough to know the love of a Baba, that sweet, golden bread.
