Tower and Town, April 2015

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My Childhood Easters

I have very happy memories of childhood Easters. I remember it being a special time, almost better than Christmas as it lasted longer than Christmas, back then. Three days with something to look forward to each day. It was special because I think, again like Christmas, the treats, fun and certain foods only happened at that time in our house, unlike today when we can get everything any time of the year, and family traditions have, in the main, long since gone.

Easter was a time to be anticipated and looked forward to. We could only get hot cross buns on Good Friday morning where I grew up, having ordered them the day before. So it was with great delight that I would set off early with my older brother to go to the baker’s shop to collect this long awaited treat and to carry them home triumphantly for breakfast, to be toasted and smothered in butter. The next treat was the Good Friday lunch – smoked haddock, with buttery mashed potato and peas. It was the only day of the year that we had this meal, to keep it special.

The following day we children were kept busy for hours painting and decorating the hard boiled eggs our mother had prepared for us during the morning. These would be hidden in the garden at some unearthly hour on Sunday morning for us to hunt for when we woke up. When the hunt was over we would run back inside clutching our precious bounty, only to peel them as fast as we could for our mother to make them into devilled eggs for breakfast. These were simply the eggs, halved and the yolks scooped out and mixed with salad cream (we didn’t have mayonnaise then!), salt and pepper, and stuffed back into the egg halves.

And the treats didn’t end there. While we had been hunting hard boiled eggs in the garden, our parents had been hiding one or two chocolate ones around the house for us to hunt after breakfast. We weren’t allowed to touch these though until after we had eaten a special Easter roast lunch.

They were simple ‘treats’ but special because Easter had been kept as something special. While I was gathering together my childhood memories, I asked my 12-year old granddaughter what Easter meant to her. The answer: chocolate!!

SuePells