Feest Isolation Days – 12 April 2020
Happy Easter! Despite the Coronovirus and lockdown it’s still Easter Sunday and a time for renewal and reflection. However limiting our world might feel at the moment, we’re still here to enjoy what we have, wherever we are.
This may be one of the first Easter Sunday breakfasts that I haven’t had kielbasa with my hard boiled eggs and horseradish. Although Sainsbury’s sells this garlicky Polish sausage, I forgot to include it in our delivery order. There won’t be poppy seed bread either. I have made it in the past but didn’t have the right ingredients this year. It’s called bread, but tastes a lot more like a cake. I remember my Polish grandmother making it; kneading the dough, then leaving it to sit and prove for the appropriate amount of time, then rolling it out and letting me spread the poppy seed mixture all over the white circle before she rolled it up and put it in the oven as we waited for it to fill her house with the first smells of Easter. Traditions like baking and eating poppy seed bread are often begun at a very young age, but in my experience can sometimes change over the years.
My other grandmother, my Baba, certainly would understand the evolution of tradition. She was Ukrainian, and besides having the best Easter Eggs ever, she went to “her” church which was Orthodox where neither Latin nor English was spoken.
Many years ago when we still lived in Exeter, Terry and I went to the Easter Midnight Mass at the local Orthodox Church. The celebration was splendid with the Gregorian chants and incense filling the small but beautiful church. Of course, it wasn’t “our” Easter time because Western churches follow a different calendar. The Orthodox Church uses the Julian calendar for their holy days. Easter always falls sometime between April 4th and May 8th each year. The date was determined at the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. It’s always on the Sunday following the paschal full moon, which is the full moon that falls on or after the spring equinox.
When we returned home from the Easter Service at two in the morning, I thought I’d call my Baba and be the first to wish her Easter greetings. Because of the time zone difference it wasn’t too late to telephone. This was before Skype or Face Time or What’s App existed and calls to the States were still expensive so didn’t occur frequently. Baba answered and in my less than perfect Ukrainian I said, “Khrystos Voskres” which is the Ukrainian Easter greeting meaning, literally, Christ has risen.
“What?” Baba responded. “Is that Kathy?”
“Yes! Khrystos Voskres.” Clearly I wasn’t saying it right. On my third try Baba asked, “Why do you keep saying that?”
“Because we’ve just been to the Orthodox Church to celebrate Easter and I thought I’d be the first to wish you Easter greetings.”
“Oh,” Baba replied, “They merged Easter with our church to be the same as everybody else’s in America years ago! It’s good to hear from you though.”
So much for my pronunciation practise. I learned that even after more than a thousand years, traditions can still change.
For the past few years we’ve spent Easter with our friends who have a house in Hay on Wye. Sadly not today. No walks for us on Hay Tor or anywhere else for that matter. Easter remains firmly at Chez Feest this year. Stay Home Protect The NHS Save Lives.
We have a few of our own traditions to lay down and one of them might just have to be Strawberry Cake. It’s the third cake I’ve baked in lockdown and most of the last one is in the freezer where this one will no doubt end up as well. It was delicious, but today after our roast lamb that is big enough to feed the entire block, we will have a Christmas pudding Terry made with his Mum’s hand-written recipe! We haven’t eaten Christmas pudding on the day it was meant to be consumed for nearly ten years because we’re in the summer sun of New Zealand so it’s become an early December treat when we celebrate the coming Christmas with the family, and then an Easter treat. His mum’s traditional recipe makes two puddings, but we have shifted the dates. My Baba would no doubt approve.
I dyed the Easter eggs yesterday and we will eat our hard-boiled eggs and horseradish this morning. Some traditions are easier than others to maintain.
Enjoy this special Easter egg!
Hope the Easter bunny found you and you are able to enjoy a few of your own traditions whatever they may be. As my Baba may or may not say, Khrystos Voskres!
With love
Kathyx