The Tales of An Anglo-American Mormon Family: Easter

With Georgie's birthday over, all attentions were on Easter. The four younger children were off for Holy Week, which made all of our Easter celebrations very much easier. As Christians, Easter is our most important celebration of the year. But culturally, of course, Christmas is done in a much bigger way. So, I've taken it upon me personally to change that in our family traditions. Since Christmas is a really big deal, making Easter an even bigger deal is, well, wonderfully challenging.

In the beginning part of the week, we made homemade marshmallows in the shape of eggs. We dipped them in chocolate and decorated them with sprinkles and frosting flowers, etc. We also did our traditional Easter craft. This year was the most scaled down Easter craft we have done since I started it this tradition about 8 years ago. We decided to do the Upper Room, and do a model of the Last Supper table, with 13 cups, 13 plates, and 13 pieces of unleavened bread, etc. We researched on the internet different artistic interpretations of the Last Supper - paintings and sculptures. We saw some very interesting, and very inspirational work.

Thursday was our traditional Jerusalem supper/Passover meal. This is where we have a few foods from the traditional Jewish Seder plate, and talk about what the foods represent. We tell the story of the Passover, and talk about the connections between the Passover, the Last Supper, and Christ's atoning sacrifice. This year, we had the Skinner family join us, and Emilia, our German exchange student, was there as well.

Jerusalem dinner, with the Skinner family

Good Friday is not a holiday in the US, which is always a pain. However, the kids were still off school, so we go to do a big Easter egg hunt with the Sommers, the Golds, and the Hubscher families. There were an obscene amount of eggs - there may have been near 500? - hidden over three gardens. It's always a great event for the kids.

Eleanor hunting for her allotted 27 eggs

Samuel, the confident 12 year old, too cool for the hunt (but then why is he there?)

Verity cannot hold all her eggs

Georgie hunting in the midst of the palm trees

The golden egg?

Saturday marked the start of General Conference weekend. General Conference is the official semi-annual conference of our church. It is broadcast live from Temple Square in Salt Lake City, and there are four 2 hour sessions over 2 days. It's always a big event in our house: we all settle down in the living room together with personalized notebooks sent to us every six months by a dear friend in England, Margaret Curley. We surround ourselves with lots of good food, and take lots of notes from the conference talks in our notebooks. At first I wasn't thrilled that Easter was on General Conference weekend , because I love going to church on Easter Sunday, and General Conference weekend is one of two weekends a year when we don't go to church. But this year Abigail said quite spontaneously to me 'I love it when Easter is on General Conference weekend'. 'Really?' I said. 'Why?' And she said 'We can relax more and enjoy Easter more when it is on General Conference weekend. So there you go.
Easter Sunday morning was lovely. The Easter bunny left Easter Sunday outfits for everyone, and laid out 7 baskets full of various candies and chocolates - one for each of the children, plus one for Emilia. Before the children could see their baskets, however, we had a short Easter devotional upstairs where we read the story of the Resurrection, talked about our belief in Jesus, and had a family prayer.

Samuel on Easter Sunday morning, having just received a much needed new suit coat

Georgie, Nelly and Verity, with their new Easter dresses

The children in their new Easter outfits, with their notebooks ready for General Conference

Our big event for the morning was a full-on Easter brunch. We invited several families from our church congregation to join us, so I was catering for something like 40 people. Yes, here is where we talk about the food.

I love Easter food. Again, very different from standard Christmas food, but there is so much tradition surrounding the culinary experience of Easter. For some reason I find myself thinking about the Orthodox Christian traditions when thinking about Easter food - so I look for traditional Easter food from places like Greece and Russia. Israeli food also features high on the list; any kind of food from Jesus's time and place gets a nod. This year, Russian hard boiled eggs with anchovies, olives, and homemade mayonnaise really caught my attention. It seemed to be very important that the mayonnaise was homemade, so for the first time in my life, I made mayonnaise. I'm a total convert! The mayonnaise was exquisite - nothing like what we buy in the stores.

Standard Easter fare in our house representing Israel is unleavened bread, so that was on the brunch table, along with a smoked salmon pate. I also made a kind of 'Jerusalem pie', a kind of quiche with Israeli flavors like mint, dill, and pine nuts. But the dish I was the most excited about was a recipe from the cookbook Jersusalem for pickled lemons. I was skeptical at first, as all you do is marinate lemons in a bit of salt, sugar, chilies, lemon juice, and a few spices. They were, however, delicious and I am fairly sure they were my favorite food on the table this Easter.

Russian Easter: olives, anchovies, hard boiled eggs, and homemade mayonnaise

Beautiful California avocado and prawn salad; pickled lemons on the left hand side

Another piece de resistance was my Greek Tsoureki bread, a sweet bread braided and then baked with colored eggs. I think its totally fab to stick decorated eggs in bread! And of course, I made tons of hot cross buns. There were also artichokes and asparagus on the table, in honor of Italian spring food.

Hot cross buns, Greek Tsoureki bread, unleavened bread, etc.

The Easter brunch table in all its sunny glory

The brunch was lovely. It was great to have so many people in the house on such a special day. We had another General Conference session, which rose to the occasion of providing great spiritual nourishment on the most important Christian holiday of the year. The kids and I especially liked this talk by Elder Jeffrey R. Holland about Jesus's incomprehensible love and power.

We then went for a hike before our Easter dinner; it was good to get out of the house on this sunny day. Plus, the puppy had to get some exercise, so we headed for the foothills.

Easter Sunday walk with family and friends

Max the dog got tired!

Then we came home and had our Easter feast - the paschal lamb, spring vegetables, something with mint, and then of course my famous strawberry and rhubarb Easter trifle for dessert.