Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Easter Blessings!

Wishing all my friends Easter blessings. If you are not Christian, then consider it the blessing of Spring - of warmth, renewal and hope. You may think it odd that I am posting Easter wishes, several days after the fact. However, in my church, the week after Easter is called "Bright Week" - the Easter celebration traditionally lasted all week long. For forty days after Easter we continue to rejoice and we customarily greet each other with "Christ is risen," to which the response is "Truly he is risen."

Our daffodils have been stymied in their attempt to bloom. There is a coldness that has settled in and it won't leave. I promise photos when they do bloom. On Easter morning, my husband found a mere dozen that had been brave enough to open in the freezing weather and cut them to adorn our breakfast table. He knows it's not Easter without our daffodils. While we wait patiently for the daffodils, here is a beautiful bowl of the traditional red eggs that my Mom made for Easter.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Happy Easter to you! Hope warm weather returns to us soon! The traditional red eggs look great. Do you know of the background of this tradition?

Anonymous said...

I'm curious about the eggs too! They're very beautiful. Cold and rainy here, I'm so ready for spring.

Sunflower Optimism said...

Hmmm - I found the following:

"A Folk Tradition - An interesting sidelight is the folk tradition related to the Saturday of Lazaros. In many places groups of children visit neighboring homes to sing the Carols of Lazaros. In return, the people of the house give the children fresh eggs. The children bring the eggs to their homes. On Great Thursday the eggs are boiled in the traditional red dye for the Paschal celebration."

I was always told that the eggs celebrated life, the red symbolized the blood shed by Christ as well as the joy of the Resurrection. Just for the record, we did not go door-to-door asking for eggs!

Cold and rainy here today - darn near monsoons this morning - kind of glad the daffies weren't up, or they would have been beaten to a pulp!

CreekHiker / HollysFolly said...

Sunflower, One of my closest friends is Greek and red eggs are their tradition... same symbols you mentioned. They play a game where two people tap the eggs together and the winner is the one without the broken egg. Loved the picture. Holly

Linda@VS said...

The tradition of the red eggs is a new and interesting one to me. Much more beautiful than the pastel ones of my own childhood.

Steppen Wolf said...

Happy Easter, Sunflower!! Liked reading and catching up on your posts!!

Marion said...

Happy Easter, Sunflower! Those red eggs really attract me...I think they look far better than the pallid eggs I coloured with the kids. I always tried to get a deep tint, but I never managed with red.

We have a windstorm here today, almost looks as if the daffodils are being torn from their roots!

Anonymous said...

I'd never heard of the red egg tradition. I like that. And also the game where the winner is the one without the broken egg. But I can just see the kids playing that. NOT! Lol

Sunflower Optimism said...

Holly, we do the same. When we were young my mom used to say "You have to eat every one that you break!" Now with the grandchildren it's "Here, take another egg, don't worry, you don't have to eat it if it gets cracked."

What a difference between a mom and a grandmom! LOL

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Velvet, when I was young I always preferred the pastel ones - because that's what everyone ELSE had! I used to make my Mom buy the "American" (pastel) dye also. Now I really appreciate my heritage so much more and I think my children do also.

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Sunil, thanks for bothering to "catch up." I am SO far behind in reading, I need another life, just to blog, LOL.

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Marion, we had a terrible nor' easter today - very windy, torrential rains. We'll see how the daffies come out of it.

As for the eggs, in addition to the red dye, to "finish" off the eggs, they are wiped with a little oil to make them shiny. I think that deepens the color even more.

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Jackie, you've led a sheltered life, LOL. The "egg game" is fun - I don't mind the broken eggs, I make egg salad sandwiches!

Dave said...

Those eggs look brilliant, almost like baby plum tomatoes. Did your mum make the bowl? Is a very pretty bowl.

Sunflower Optimism said...

Thanks Dave! My mom has many talents but pottery making is not one of them. The painting on the bowl looks Provencal to me and it may be from the south of France, where my family is originally from. I'll have to ask her.

Anonymous said...

And you know what a holiday today?