Life: Idiotropic

In over 5000 towns and villages in Spain, Easter is celebrated with parades, processions, woven palms, and hooded men, but aside from the large scale religious celebrations, it's fairly quiet.  There are no bunnies in the shops, no Easter chocolates.  Some bakeries sell a snake shaped bread with a Kinder egg set into it.  That's about it.  No commercialization at all.  It's a little sad. 

Of course, I don't like the over-commercialization of religious holidays, but a few bunnies here and there and a special food to mark the day is kind of nice.  Besides, I was looking forward to learning about some really cool Spanish tradition.  They eat bacalao.  Blech.  That's what I see now.  This salt crusted dried flat fish sold in heaps in all the groceries and markets sealed in vacuumed sealed bags.  Just rinse, hydrate, and eat.  Mmmm.  Not so much.

I asked Spanish friends what they do to celebrate the day.  They do hard boil eggs.  Some color them.   Fin.  The end.  In Romania they dye the eggs red and try to crack their opponents egg in a game to see who can collect the most. The one who cracks the other egg without cracking their own wins and gets to keep both eggs.  In Belgium, the church bells stop ringing on Good Friday and don't ring again until Easter Sunday, so they say that the bells bring the chocolate eggs and goodies for the children.  In Australia, they toss handfuls of foil wrapped chocolate eggs (Cadbury is an Australian brand) and let the children hunt for them. 

Well, in the US, we like our hunts, so I let each of the little girls invite 8 friends.  We ended up having 18 kids at our house.   Most had never been to an Easter Egg hunt before.

I had stuffed 360 plastic eggs with toys and candy.  Kirk took 40 minutes to hide them all around the yard.  At 1230, armed with bags, the children were set loose to run through the streamer barrier and start filling their bags.  We filled the rest of the time with sack races, "Freeze" dancing, and food.  Several kids and adults were brave enough to try the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but most said "it has a funny taste."

It was a nice party.  I always enjoy these times when I can share a bit of my culture with others.  All the parents were very nice.  It was funny to see the other end of things.  So often I am the one in a new cultural situation wondering what is normal and what is acceptable.  Now, several parents had asked me what to bring, if it's a birthday, how it works, and what is an "easter egg hunt."  On parent wanted to stay, but didn't know if it was ok,  saw other parents leaving and left too.  Later she asked what is normal.  She didn't want to be rude.  Another family saw the bulk of the guests leave at the end of the party and decided mid-conversation that they should go too because they didn't want to be rude.  I pulled up chairs and we talked 2 more hours.

This is fun.  I can't wait until Thanksgiving... or may be the 4th of July!  ;)