The subject for this part of the month is:
"Traditions"
It is a bit late, but still appropriate.
Given the season just passed, I have chosen to write about a tradition we started with some holidays in our family.
When my older son was just about the right size for his first Easter of understanding about the Easter bunny, his father started a tradition that he has kept with his children.
When he, his brother, and now his children, would get up on Easter morning, they did not immediately find an Easter basket. Instead they found a “trail” of Easter goodies, an occasional dyed egg, tufts of artificial grass scattered through the house. The ‘trail’ always starts in the children’s room, and they have to follow and find the goodies that lead to the grand prize of an Easter basket. It certainly doesn’t sound like much: unless you are the kid who is following a false trail that stops at the slightly open window where the Easter bunny entered or left the house…or the one that could end in the open oven in the kitchen, or the one that ends on the back of the toilet in the bathroom.
Baskets always found their way into some strange places to be located by an enterprising older kid. Bathtubs, kitchen cabinets, closet shelves were some of the interesting places the real treasures were hidden in those days.
Another tradition that is associated with Easter began in my childhood, as far as I know. We had to change the tradition due to changing times, but we still do this on or around Easter.
My Mom would get me dressed on Sunday mornings and if the weather was good, put me and my brother in chairs on the front porch to listen to the church chimes from the Methodist Church in our neighborhood. Easter was one of the times during the year when so many of the traditional Easter songs were played., and I remember each of them with great fondness.
When we moved to a larger city, and my boys were younger, we discovered that the Greek Orthodox church in the city had some of the same songs on their chimes and they played them on Easter morning. Of course, the Greek Orthodox Church has a different day for the celebration of Easter, so my sons and I would drive over, park in the public library parking lot and listen to the chimes on Easter when it was celebrated there. I still catch the chimes from time to time, and think back to those days of being a kid and being a Mom who carried on the tradition just a little differently.
Comments (18)
I loved reading this, Sweet Cyn! We had similiar traditions growing up...and I continued some of them with my kids.
Some years I did a "treasure" hunt for the Easter baskets...my kids had to find clues to read that led them to the next clue, etc. They loved that!!! One year I even made the clues rhyme! Ha! that was hard to do, for me..then they wanted it like that the next year! 
It's fun to set our own traditions...but, also, keep a few from our childhoods.
Hugs to you this beautiful day!
I was first!!! Was I second?!?!
I know you are hard to bug....but am I bugging you yet?!?!
One of my life long traditions is to bug the people I enjoy most. Lucky you!
Very interesting traditions...I like the Easter trail one. I love to hear church bells, but so few new churches have them.
how sweet
makes me think of ET movie with the peanut butter candy
I like the idea of the Easter treasure hunt. In my house, we always were just given easter baskets because that's the way that both of my parents did it when they were growing up!
I remember Easter egg hunts when I was little.
We'd get let out by age so that the youngest kids have the most time to be cute and pick up eggs.
-Anna.
i like the idea of a trail the bunny left. Watch out for those little raisins!
Traditions are so important in families. I don't know that my kids ever had them with their kids.
I started to comment that we didn't have traditions when I was a child, but we did. Every Friday we had tuna cassarole after picking my father up from the airport. Every Sat. my father grilled t-bones and we watched Gleason. Every Sun. my mother and I had McDonald's cheese burgers after dropping my father at the airport.
I love your Easter stories and I adore family traditions.
Dear Cynthia,
You're the only blogger I read who announced Mr.Zimmerman's Pulitzer. Newspapers seem to be disappearning. The L.A. Times is a fraction of it's glorious self, and there used to be five dialies in town, not one.
So why not give Pulitzers top songwriters. I think Cole Porter deserved one.
Next they'll be giving Pulitzers to bloggers!
I'm preparing my acceptance speech as we speak.
I'd love to see your short story based on polygamy. I wonder if they'll have to rewrite season three of Big Love now!
I like the tradition listening to the chimes together.
Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
:) enjoyed the story
mary
Love family traditions and everyone's variations. My dd & I were just discussing our Easter traditions on my last vist. She was saying the people she knew can't believe she always had to look for her Easter basket. Of course it was hid easy when she was young and progressed to harder as she got older. I gave her an easter basket through when she left home.
This is THE weekend by the way! woo hoo!
*hugs*
When our kids were younger, we would get up before them and hide the eggs that they dyed the day before. Since Idaho is still covered in snow by Easter, we had to hide them inside. Big mistake. A few days after Easter, we had this awful smell like something died. Even after much searching we did not find the source. Then one day, many weeks later, we discovered a dried up old egg left over from the egg hunt. From then on we decided to hide the plastic eggs.
steve
traditions are interesting for us these days, as our kids get older they are starting new traditions with their families, our families are spread out so getting together is a challenge but always worth the effort it takes to see each other.
thanks for dropping by- someday I'd like to get to Alaska too, it looks like an open beautiful area to spend time in seeing large wildlife animals.
I liked to send my kids on treasure hunts too....and they work for just about any holiday.