It's Not Your Grandmother's Easter Anymore
The Easter tradition of wearing your Sunday best has gone by the wayside, the author says, recalling Easter Sundays as kid, circa 1963.
Easter Sunday 1963 – On the left, the writer at 7 years old. His brother Dave on the right, age 4, obviously near death due to excessive chafe. Don’t let the writer’s miserable expression fool you. He really was miserable.
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Photos
Nobody dresses up for Easter anymore.
Nobody shines their shoes, puts on a suit and struggles with that top shirt button; nobody wears white gloves, a new hat and a gay Easter frock; and nobody uses the word “gay” like that anymore.
Unless wearing the medium blue T-shirt without the dark blue stain and not missing a belt loop in your best jeans constitutes “dressing up”.
Easter Sunday was the only event of the Kid Year that I ever wore a suit and tie and a pair of hard shoes. The tie was usually a clip-on bowtie and the suit was of the finest 35 thread-count fallow brown burlap. The shoes still smelled of rubber and glue and always seemed to be one size too small.
The suit pants were so scratchy you had to walk in a stiff-legged fashion, being careful not to bend the legs at the knees or hips in order to reduce the risk of second-degree burns.
So the scene on Easter Sunday outside of St. Luke’s Church – when viewing the boys in wool suits, anyway – resembled a bunch of well dressed, walking clothespins. By chance if Dr. Jonas Salk happened by Sparrows Point on any given Easter Sunday back in the early 60s, he would surely have contacted the AMA to ask why all the male youths in the community had been deprived of all his beneficial research.
By the time all the genuflecting and the kneel-sit-stand-repeat routine of Mass had finally come to a merciful end, not only were the church kneelers and wooden pews cleaned and buffed to a fine shine, but so were your lower extremities.
(I once tried to wear my flannel pajamas under the pants, but I couldn’t get my shoes to fit over the footie part.)
If you happened to have a nice springtime poison oak or poison ivy rash at the time (like yours truly), you then became eligible to sit with the octogenarians in the Extreme Unction section of the church, located next to the emergency side exit.
On the other hand, the girls loved Easter. They had it easy: new dress, new shoes, new hat, maybe even a new crucifix necklace or a limited one-day usage of grandma’s special “diamond” rosary – it was just that simple.
Free from the encumbrances of having their legs encased in used Brillo pads, the girls were happy, their smiles genuine.
They won every Easter egg hunt because they could bend and stoop, an ability the boys did not possess on this day. They enjoyed Easter dinner because they had full use of their arms and weren’t required to wear a full body bib to protect their white shirt and burlap ensemble.
Even a female toddler all dressed up in white lace and a bonnet who stumbled and fell every two steps was more graceful than a 6-year-old boy doing a Frankenstein walk down the church aisle.
The girls just had it easier on Easter Sunday than the boys.
If any of you girls out there disagree with that assessment then not only do I want to hear your trumped up story, but I want proof in the form of photos that clearly indicate human suffering caused by rough, stiff clothing and signed affidavits from at least 10 eyewitnesses describing in great detail your ordeal of slipping on a nice cotton dress and tilting your hat just so.
For my next Easter column we will delve into the correlation between the Holy Triduum – Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday – and Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail, packing a baked ham and a basketful of jelly beans, dyed hardboiled eggs and chocolate rabbits.
- To my old friend Dave Shifflett: Rest in peace
Kim Remesch
2:25 pm on Saturday, April 23, 2011
Oh, I have mental scars and the photos to back it up, buddy. My hair was long enough to sit on for most of my life. I couldn't buy a curl for love or money. But my mom insisted I should have them at Easter. That meant over 100 pin curls the night before--200 bobby pins sticking in my head..and I mean sticking my head. Then it was an hour sitting under a dryer that was basically a big plastic bag that inflated and made your ears feel like they were on fire. I'd have to sort of sleep that way (200 bobby pins in my head = no sleep). Then she took them out the next day. And there would either be Shirley Temple curls or no curls at all. If no curls, it was plan B: a huge bun adorned with a brightly-colored bow. I'm 400 feet tall so I really stuck out with a red bow on my head. Scratchy clothing---seriously, step off. In a word: lace. Lots of it. tiers and tiers of lace to build up the undercarriage, so to speak. My Easter photo is up on FB. But yeah, it's sad it's gone, and I miss it. Go figure. Someone should tell you those will be the good old days to you when you're living it all, I think. Of course, you'd never believe it.
Mark Birkelien
2:51 pm on Saturday, April 23, 2011
Kim - While I found your tale to be an interesting one, it is nevertheless strictly hearsay. Please reread my article and note the "disclaimer" requiring photographic as well as eyewitness proof of your alleged suffering.
Kim Remesch
2:28 am on Monday, April 25, 2011
Mark, I'm all about hearsay. I'll bet you never had to wear a glow in the dark ballet costume or a toile tutu...You can't top this stuff. Keep trying. Also have photos of that on FB. But our prom dresses were always better than the '70s tux with ruffled shirts. Yikes. Now if you have THOSE photos, Mark, prom season is coming up. I think you should write something about going to prom. ;-)
Mary Hoffman
2:56 pm on Saturday, April 23, 2011
I laughed so hard -- at both Mark's story and Kim's reply.
Oh Kim, I concur. I swore when I was old enough that I would never wear lace, wool anything or patent leather shoes ever again. Of course years later I wound up wearing ridiculous heels, garter and stockings. Today you will find me only in the softest of cotton when available.
Thanks for the memories --- and the laughs. Good article, Mark.
Toni Podles Asher
10:06 pm on Saturday, April 23, 2011
kim, i forgot about the pin curls. our mom did the same thing withme and my sister. also i can remember put on vaseline jelly on our patent leather shoes to make them shine!
Mark, I dated Dave back in school and sadly went to his funeral on Thursday. he is be greatly missed.
David Robert Crews
1:02 am on Monday, April 25, 2011
"if Dr. Jonas Salk happened by Sparrows Point on any given Easter Sunday back in the early 60s, he would surely have" seen my family and me in front of St. Matthews Episcopal Church or in the 1000 block of F. Street at my grandparents' home. But he wouldn't have seen me doing any such suffering, as you Mark, because I never wore a wool suit; but wore fairly comfortable cotton and/or polyester dress pants, a dress shirt, sport coat and tie, along with good looking dress shoes - most of which had all been bought new for Easter Sunday. And I enjoyed looking my best on Easter. Plus there was grandmom's big ol' family dinner on Easter Sunday to eat.
I certainly loved how girls on Easter Sunday were exceptionally pretty all dressed up in their finest new outfits - everywhere that day. Their hair was always it's most beautiful - but I've always been glad boys didn't have to wear hair curlers. Never could figure how chicks (whoops! 1960's slang that some people - mostly progressive women - deplored) I mean females can sleep wearing curlers.
I gotta say that I had some muffled laughs always seeing a few girls walking in their brand new, first pair of high heeled shoes. Their young legs and ankles were always wobbling like being slightly disjointed; and the girls never smiled, but scowled angrily down at their shoes and all around at anyone they saw. I knew, though, that, soon enough, them girls'd master their high heel shoes walkin skills and look real good walking in them heels.
David Robert Crews
1:43 am on Monday, April 25, 2011
I JUST REMEMBERED! I USED TO BE ALLERGIC TO WOOL. If not, I might have had to suffer wearing wool suits back then, too. Any wool blanket on me caused a rash that swelled my face up and eyes shut.
But, during my teenage years, I grew out of that allergy, which would have made me ineligible for the military draft. The military slept under wool blankets and often wore wool uniforms. Fortunately for me, when I served in the Army during the Vietnam War, I was lucky that the Army did not send me to Vietnam. I could've beat the draft with my medical records of a wool allergy, and a million other guys would have done so, but I knew I'd outgrown that allergy and couldn't live with lying my way out of going into the military when so many other guys my age had to go in and also accept their chance at being killed in Vietnam.
Well, now, that wool allergy didn't last long enough to make me 4-F (ineligible to be drafted), but after reading how other guys suffered in wool suits as kids, at least my allergy spared me that.
Trust me, Mark, those wool allergy rashes were bad, so don't envy my childhood Easter outfits a bit.
I'll be darn, I had forgotten all about that wool allergy.
Pam Tyson-Page
7:21 am on Saturday, May 7, 2011
Mark, Your article made me laugh for so many reasons. I recently posted an Easter picture from probably 1963. Kathy Goodman, Beverly Burton and Pam Tyson. Lace tights, bonnets, patent leather shoes, plaid spring coats, and I even had a corsage (my stepdad bought me one every year!)
I live in Concord, NC now and go to a very casual church. Contemporary christian music - the kids wear hoodies, blue jeans, and Rainbow flip flops.
In 1994, when my son was two years olds, I gave birth to beautiful twin girls. We tried to do the formal catholic thing. Running around looking for patent leather shoes - trying to get two screaming wiggling toddlers into lace tights. I'd be stressed out, in tears and yelling at everyone "would you stop - we need to get to church!!" Something was just wrong with that picture.
Today - I slip into my own jeans, grab a pair of flip flops and say "do you want to go to Crossroads with me." A teen may yell, "Can I drive?" That's a whole different stress than lace tights :)
Things are a little more relaxed today. We pray to the same Lord as we did in 1963 - we just celebrate Him in a different fashion. I am grateful for both experiences and those yet to come.
Fondly, Pam Tyson-Page