Creative Easter Traditions in My Family

Back when my sisters and I were little girls, my mom used to make the bulk of the candy for our Easter baskets herself. This is my favorite Easter tradition memory. She would use chocolate molds to lovingly create oodles of chocolate bunnies and chocolate Easter baskets and other chocolate Easter icons. Ours was a Catholic family, so she also made chocolate religious symbols, such as chocolate lambs and even chocolate crosses, although nothing quite so controversial as the Chocolate Jesus sculpture a few years back (what's wrong with using chocolate as an artistic medium, I wondered, and why should that be construed as blasphemous?). Nothing quite so large-scale as the Chocolate Jesus either, my mother's chocolate creations were sweet treats small enough to be tenderly enveloped in cellophane bags and nestled amongst the Easter grass in our baskets.

She really did get creative with her chocolate-making. She didn't simply stick to plain solid chocolate for all of them. Some were plain, but others were graced with Rice Krispies or peanut butter. Others were made with dark chocolate or white chocolate or even mint-flavored chocolate. Her delightful chocolate-making ministrations made our Easter baskets seem so much more charmingly personalized. Since most of the Easter basket contents consisted of my mother's homemade confections, the store bought candies seemed second rate and artificial to me. They seemed synthetic and even somewhat foreign and more suited to Halloween than to Easter. A couple possible exceptions to store bought candies seeming artificial were jellybeans and malted milk eggs, because those two goodies were always part of our Easter basket contents, too, and definitely came to be associated with Easter, as well.

My mother's homemade chocolate is certainly a sweet Easter tradition memory from my girlhood, but even when my sisters and I became adults, our mom continued to bestow us with Easter baskets each year. In our adulthood, her Easter tradition changed, though. She no longer created oodles of homemade chocolate bunnies and lambs and crosses. She no longer hid our Easter baskets for us to hunt for and discover Easter morning. She no longer even used traditional Easter baskets.

Her new Easter tradition and also a new manifestation of her Easter creativity involved choosing fun, alternative containers to use in lieu of Easter baskets and in which to nestle a few goodies for each of us. For example, one year when Caboodles style makeup and jewelry cases were popular, she used those as our alternative Easter baskets. Another year, she used shower caddies. Instead of a plethora of chocolate and candy, our adult Easter treats were more likely to include such items as a nifty pair of patterned socks or a an extra-delectable bath & body potion, with maybe one gourmet store bought chocolate bunny and a bag of Starbursts added to the mix for good measure. The contents varied from year to year and so did the containers; it was fun to find out what she had chosen that year.

I am a believer that heartfelt creativity makes any holiday tradition better.