The holidays are a time for family and food! Next to Thanksgiving, Easter Sunday is one of the greatest feast days of the year. The main dishes may be cooked differently, but most cultures include a lavish item like lamb, goat, roast chicken or ham.
Symbolic foods often make an appearance too. Eggs symbolize Christ’s emergence from the tomb or spring fertility, depending on which school of thought you hail from, and hot cross buns symbolize the crossed arms of Christ as he lay in the tomb, before His resurrection. Around the world, the menus are rich, symbolic and bountiful.
Traveling to Poland, the holidays are both a religious celebration and also a lavish extravaganza full of many rich foods. It is customary to have an Easter basket (”Swieconka Basket”) blessed by the priest, which contains a Paschal Lamb made of bread, cake or butter (symbolizing Jesus as “the Lamb of God”), decorated and plain eggs (symbolizing rebirth), meat like ham or kielbasa sausage, horseradish, bitter herbs (signifying the bitterness of Christ’s suffering), salt (representing hospitality), pussy willow branches (signifying the earth’s awakening), bread (symbolizing communion), and traditional sweet bread like Plotek. Boiled kielbasa sausage, ham, cold cuts, pickled beets, cabbage, green vegetables, potato salad or mashed potatoes with caramelized onion and dill, pound cakes, sweet breads, kolaczi (lamb cake) and babka are traditional fare.
Like Russians and Ukrainians, the Poles are noted for their beautiful style of Easter egg decorating. The Monday after Easter Sunday (”Dyngus Day”) is one of the oldest and rowdiest holidays in the Polish calendar year, where men and women dance to polkas, enjoy a Polish beer, squirt each other with water and whack each other with pussy willow branches to celebrate spring.
The holidays are primarily celebrated with feasting, but also with decorations. The Easter basket is an important tradition for children. Inside the basket, they will find spring-oriented toys like jump ropes, sidewalk chalk and bubbles, as well as activity books and delicious treats like the chocolate bunny, marshmallow peeps and colorful jellybeans.
Kids like to make Easter crafts, which can be hung up in the home and the leafless Easter tree decorated with hollow eggs has become a new fad in America, which originated in Germany. Dyed Easter eggs are made from food color tablets and vinegar. It is also the time of year to decorate oneself in new clothes, according to tradition dating back to Shakespearean times.
To read more The Holidays At Easter Time
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