Monday, April 06, 2009

Holiday Traditions

Since I won't talk to you guys again before the weekend - Happy Easter! My Sheltie, Bogey, was kind enough to pose for an Easter photo for your enjoyment.

Most families have some sort of holiday tradition, but I think a lot of them center around Christmas. In my family, it was all about Easter. Back when we were all in the same state the whole family would get together for Easter at one house - usually one with acreage. We're talking maybe 50 people or more eating and having fun. Because you see, our Easter tradition was games!

The spoon race with raw eggs, raw egg toss, the three-legged race - we played them all. AND we had our own family tradition called the Egg Walk. If you were new to the family (as in married in - if you were just born you don't do the egg walk until you can actually walk) you were required to do the egg walk. This is how it goes:

A couple of people take a ton of the boiled, decorated eggs and scatter them across a pretty large section of the yard - you can watch while they're doing this. Then you are blindfolded, and spun around in a circle. Someone points you in the right direction and your objective is to walk through the eggs without breaking one.

Thing is, while you were being blindfolded and spun in a circle, we picked up all the eggs. Do you know what it looks like to see grown adults tiptoeing around nothing? And don't think you're doing this in absolute quiet - oh no - there is all sorts of heckling going on and the yelling of "watch out" and "not to the right" from the sidelines.

Now, THAT is a family who appreciates a good joke!

Any Easter traditions in your family?

Deadly DeLeon

8 comments:

Keri Ford said...

Grandparents had ostriches when I was little. They would hide eggs and whoever found the ostrich egg got a big prize!

Hubs family usually does an easter egg hunt. They us the plastic cup and stick prizes in there. There's usually one or two eggs with $20. Yes, all us 'grown ups' get out there for the hunt...I mean, we got to help our son find his eggs!

Boy will be 2 for easter this year, so he should under the idea of look for eggs this year!

Terri Osburn said...

When I was very young my dad's family had large gatherings around Easter complete with Easter egg hunts and games. But that ended pretty quick and now my family does nothing. Too much dysfunction and people who won't talk to each other nevermind gather for a holiday.

But I have to admit, I'm pretty glad I never married into your family. I have a strong dislike for practical jokes and that sounds so mean. LOL!

Gemma Halliday said...

We're all about coloring the eggs in our family. Every year we try a new technique. And, of course, it's also tradition to forget where we hid one and find it six weeks later due to the rotting smell.

~Gemma

Jana DeLeon said...

Keri - Ostrich eggs - how cool! We do the money in the eggs now for my niece. Her mother is really good at watching how much candy she takes in, so we try to suppliment with cash instead. As she is only four, she hasn't quite made the leap from cash to shoe money, but I'm working on it. :)

Jana DeLeon said...

terrio - Oh yes, it doesn't sound like the nicest thing, but I promise, anyone marrying into MY family had already chosen to take part in whatever - otherwise they wouldn't have selected someone from my family. :)

Have you read my books? I'm not saying they're autobiographical or anything but well.......

Jana DeLeon said...

Gemma - Yeah, we've had that happen when we got rained out of the hunt. Not good. And then my brother and I would wear the eggs out rehiding them in the house for about a week - at least until my mom found them all and either tossed the casualties or made egg salad sandwiches with the survivors.

I wanted to do some cool colors this year. I don't think I've colored eggs in 20 years or more. This is what happens when you don't have kids. But (god forbid) I got a Martha Stewart magazine the other day, and now there's something I want to try. :)

Christie Craig said...

I always make up Easter baskets. My kids are grown, but they still get their baskets. I don't dye eggs anymore. When they all left me to the decorating, I decided they could live with plastic eggs.

Happy Easter.

CC

Jana DeLeon said...

Christie - Plastic eggs are good. You can put fun stuff in plastic eggs.