Easter Memories by Pastor Leid

As a child I grew up in hard times back in the 1930’s having been born in 1929, the year the depression hit. When I was born there were three older brothers so when Harry arrived my folks said, "Thank God it's a boy, now we do not have to build on another room on the house." Cash money was scarce, and we had to produce most of our vegetables and fruits to have food to eat. Dad got milk from a farmer who had a herd of dairy cows, and then would work for the farmer when harvest time came to catch up on the payments for the milk.

We attended a church that at times was evangelical, and other times modernistic depending on the theology of the current pastor. If the pastor did not believe in being born again, or that Christ was the Divine Son of God, or there was a resurrection, it was hard to emphasize the Bible themes of Easter which most Churches follow.

Here are some of the important Easter emphases when I was growing up in church in Ohio, USA.

• Easter was the annual Ladies Style Show. It was the all time Sunday of the year when the ladies trotted out in their new stylish outfits. The more stylish the matching outfit the better the show that was created. As children we used to laugh behind the ladies backs, but never to their faces, or we would get slapped. Many of the ladies were creative, and sewed their own outfits. Those who had money purchased their outfits from the local department stores, or from Sears catalog. By the way, almost all Sears catalogs ended up in the outdoor toilets as toilet paper out of necessity.
• At our house Easter was a very special time for all of us. It was the one day of the year we could have all the hard boiled eggs we could eat at breakfast. Grandpa had chickens, and so on this day we feasted on boiled eggs. When Easter was over I often times wondered by we never got sick eating all those boiled eggs.
• Some years we would have an Easter church play with a variety of themes. We had some educators in the church so they were good at coming up with ideas. My three older brothers could really mess up a good church play. Easter egg hunts had not reached our community, or perhaps disappeared because of the depression. However they entered my life as an adult when I thrilled to hide eggs for our three small children.

  Easter as a child left me with a mixed bag of memories due to the strong and weak theology of our pastors. The stabling factor of faith in my life came from my mother who was a devoted believer in Jesus Christ, and always took us to church even though on Easter we had big patches on our trousers, and holes in our shoes. Truth is, we loved Easter Sunday as we usually got candy which was a rare treat.