In article >,
Ed Pawlowski > wrote:
>
>"Charlotte L. Blackmer" > wrote
>> A new outfit for Easter is hardly an invention of the modern "decadent"
>> marketing age! Back in the Middle Ages, lords traditionally gave all
>> their servants and retainers new clothes twice a year ... for
>> Christmas/New Year's/Epiphany (NY and Epiphany being the gift-giving
>> occasions) and Easter.
>
>> For me, planning Easter clothes and Easter food is part of the fun of
>> Easter.
>
>Easter is a time of re-birth, the Resurrection. A new life. New clothing
>is a part of that new beginning. Sprig is also a time of new beginnings.

It's all part of the great circle of life. Some of the great feasts of
the Church are during Lent.

On a churchy board I hang out on, someone started a thread seriously
suggesting that the church year be "simplified" - taking
Annunciation and other great feasts out of Lent because it was
"not logical" and "confusing". Not surprisingly, this person had gotten
nowhere with his own parish.

>> Items for Easter celebrations - candy, food, clothing, decorations - have
>> been "marketed" in a secular manner ever since I can remember. Those who
>> observe Lent in the traditional ways of prayer, fasting, study, service,
>> and alms-giving will certainly notice a tension between the ways of the
>> Church and the ways of the world, but again, this is nothing new and is
>> not even the first time during this church year something like this has
>> happened.
>
>All of those secular marking ploys are rooted in a tradition of meaning even
>if the meaning has been lost. I don't blame the markets as much as the
>people buying into it.

I can't even really get annoyed about what other people do in response to
the marketing. I don't have to participate, and I have been enjoined in
various ways to do my own personal inventory and leave other people to do
their own.

>I do like those coconut eggs though.

And you can buy them for half price on Easter Monday, which is just
getting rolling (Day 2 of the eight or fifty-day celebration of Easter,
depending on how you do it) if you are doing it the Church Way. We have a
tagline "we are compelled to feast" at my parish for the Fifty Days, but
personally I have had to ramp it way back because Easter Feasting Season
ran into Birthday Feasting Season (my birthday is in mid-June
and I usually run it through my original due date, July 4) and my
metabolism is not what it used to be.

ObFood: I learned recently that rice fritters were a traditional St.
Joseph's Day sweet-milky-eggy-break-from-Lent treat in parts of southern
Italy. I had heard only about zeppole (doughnuts) before but it makes
excellent sense.

Charlotte


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