My little Montreal family doesn't celebrate Easter. Religion interests us, but doesn't inform our lives. We're happy to observe the beliefs of others, but that doesn't mean we've made them our own. What we do like though, and what I in particular cherish, is carrying on the personal traditions of our childhoods, reinterpreting and adapting them into rituals of our own.
When I was a kid Easter meant food. All holidays meant food but Easter meant food + chocolate + chocolate food hunts. It meant decorating sugar cookies. It meant spending time with family and undoing one's belt and relaxing. Cecil B DeMille's 1956 version of The Ten Commandments always played on tv and I was allowed a special pass each year to stay up late and watch. It fueled my love of extravagance & epic & magic and I looked forward to it every year, despite it's dated decadence, un-child-friendly subject matter and nearly 4-hour running time. And we always decorated eggs, always in the same way, batik-style with abstract wax patterning and repeated dying. Our own tiny Pollocks.
It's important to me, now that I'm so far from my family and the people who informed my development, that I continue to observe these rituals I love, despite having to form my own opinions about the holidays they surround. It's important for me to share these traditions with the people who are foremost in my current life. And it's important I still revere and acknowledge the magic and joy they once brought. And so I am continuing on.
When I was a kid Easter meant food. All holidays meant food but Easter meant food + chocolate + chocolate food hunts. It meant decorating sugar cookies. It meant spending time with family and undoing one's belt and relaxing. Cecil B DeMille's 1956 version of The Ten Commandments always played on tv and I was allowed a special pass each year to stay up late and watch. It fueled my love of extravagance & epic & magic and I looked forward to it every year, despite it's dated decadence, un-child-friendly subject matter and nearly 4-hour running time. And we always decorated eggs, always in the same way, batik-style with abstract wax patterning and repeated dying. Our own tiny Pollocks.
It's important to me, now that I'm so far from my family and the people who informed my development, that I continue to observe these rituals I love, despite having to form my own opinions about the holidays they surround. It's important for me to share these traditions with the people who are foremost in my current life. And it's important I still revere and acknowledge the magic and joy they once brought. And so I am continuing on.
beautiful eggies.
ReplyDeleteThanks buddy!
Deleteoh my god, these are beautiful!! how do you do this??
ReplyDeleteBasically you mix up some pots of dye (1C hot water, 2TB vinegar, 10-20 drops colouring), hard boil some eggs, light some candles and start dripping wax and dying, then more drips, then more dye and so on. Just go with it - I like to go overboard. After, bake them in a 300 degree oven till all the wax drips off (on a rack, over a cookie sheet lined with tinfoil - it will smell a little toxic) and give them a soft rub with a papertowel when they come out to remove any remaining wax. As long as you never crack the shells you can keep the eggs indefinitely.
DeleteDid I mention that I love these eggs? Because I love these eggs. You always made the prettiest ones. I wish I had decorated some this year!! (with you!)
ReplyDeleteMake some eggs! It's not too late! I always thought Dad made the best eggs - so abstract and such unusual colour combinations. It's his I always try to emulate.
Deletethese are magic
ReplyDeleteThese are STUNNING!
ReplyDeleteSo beautiful!! We coloured eggs when I was a kid but not with the wax, too, I want to try this! xo
ReplyDeletewow, these are so beautiful!
ReplyDelete