Memories of Easters Past

The preparation for this Easter holiday brings back many memories of Easters past. Easters spent with family and friends; Easters spent in Bloomfield, NJ with my mother, surrounded by her children and grandchildren; whole lamb on a skewer, being cooked in Pauline’s back yard, while our children took turns in cranking the handle to turn the lamb. This was generally followed by Easter egg hunts, an American custom that we adopted as part of our Easter celebration.

I recall vividly the midnight Resurrections Masses in Manhattan, and my family's efforts to bring the lit Easter candle home on the subway. It was the one day of the year that my father came to church with us. It was a particular challenge to keep the candle lit on the train, from 96 Street to 135street, and then walk from the train station, six blocks to our home. But what a thrill when that lit candle made it into the house!!

Then there are memories going even further back when I was a three year old, and living in an occupied country. During the German occupation of World War II, a desperate poverty and a great famine overtook Greece. My father was in the United States at the time, serving as a soldier in the US military. It was during those dreaded years of the great famine, that my mother, in order to avoid starvation, left her family in Vrondados, with a three year old in tow, and moved in with my father's family in Viki, a northern village of Chios. The journey from Vrondados, to Viki on mule back, took nearly a whole day.

Many of the memories I have of the three years during which my mother and I lived in Viki, are centered around my paternal grandparents’ hearth. Food was plentiful in my grandparents’ home because my father’s people were all farmers and fishermen.

I was the first grandchild of her oldest son, and my grandmother Paraskevi doted on me, and I, in turn adored her. My grandmother had a generosity of spirit which was rare, particularly in days when food was scarce. My grandmother would bake every week and she would make extra bread for her friends and neighbors, as well as, for the poor of the village. She would send me, and her young son Steven, who was two year older than me, to deliver the bread to the poor, the hungry, the widows and their orphans.

The holiday which I remember most vividly as a child, was the midnight Mass of the Resurrection is the village. I remember the Church of the Dormition of the Virgin, "Tis Panagias" as it was called in Greek, where the men would stand on one side of the church and the women on the other. I remember standing in front of my grandmother as she wrapped her arms around me. Just before midnight, all the candles, except one, in the alter of the church, would be extinguished. The church would become completely dark. I remember being frightened, and my grandmother holding me tighter and making the sign of the cross on my chest, continuously, to reassure me that everything would be alright. Then the priest would light his candle and begin chanting, “defte lavete fos, ap tou anesperou fotos” as he lit several parishioners' candles, and within a minute, the church was brightly lit, by the candles that people lit from each other.

I have attended many Easter midnight mass services, since the ones in the village, and although the ritual is universal in every Greek Orthodox Church, nothing compares to the midnight mass in Viki, enfolded in my grandmother’s arms.

For this Easter, in keeping with the traditions of my family, I baked koulourakia, and I made tsourekia. Like my grandmother, I made extra tsourekia to give my next door neighbors. It made me feel good to pass on my grandmother’s tradition.
VKA