At first, our celebration of Easter this year in Scotland seemed as if it would be similar, for the most part, to the way we celebrate in the States. Our church was planning a non-denominational Easter Day service, which we would attend in the morning. This service was held at 7:00 am (I think it was supposed to be similar to a sunrise service, but since the sun comes up at 5:20 am, that’s a bit tricky…) at the ruins of St. Mary’s on the Rock, which is between the North Sea and the ruins of St. Andrews Cathedral. It was a glorious morning, and the service was full of people, and though I couldn’t hear all of what was being said because of the crashing of the waves, the part that I did hear was quite moving and inspired. Communion was given out at the altar of the Cathedral, and after that, the whole congregation moved over to the Scores in front of the castle to share a breakfast of sausage rolls.
Putting Easter lunch together for our family this year was a little trickier than I had anticipated, however. I managed to translate my grandmother’s recipe for nut bread into grams and milliliters with passable results, but I did have a bit of trouble procuring an Easter ham. There is no such thing as spiral-sliced, dry-cured ham here…it’s gammon, and it’s sold raw. I discovered this on Good Friday—too late to begin the soaking process required to remove all the salt from the raw, cured ham. Instead, I ended up buying several hunks of ham-off-the-bone from the deli counter (ignoring the quizzical look from the deli guy who must have wondered how large a ham sandwich I was planning to make with that quantity…) and removing it from the deli bag before going into the house so David didn’t see how much it cost (there’s certainly no 49 cents per pound Easter deals to be had here!). The best part was that, not only were the deviled eggs surprisingly tasty even though they were made with English mustard, they didn’t have the tell-tale ‘these are obviously recycled Easter eggs” streaks of blue dye across the whites. Apparently, the Pas Easter Egg dye company hasn’t tapped into the British market, because none of the Americans I knew could find egg-dying kits anywhere here. Either that, or they recognized that Easter egg dye just doesn’t work as well on dark brown British eggs.
I’m afraid that Easter this year was quite different for Emma and John, however. Since they are attending a Catholic school here, I figured that the in-school Stations of the Cross might be a bit jarring to them, but they seemed to get a lot out of it, and told us all about it when they came home (Emma even knows the Adoramus Te now…) Instead, the biggest difference for them was the difference in the more secular Easter traditions. For example, villages and towns here don’t do egg hunts, and Scottish kids don’t get Easter baskets. Instead, they all get one huge chocolate egg…often filled with other candies inside. I tried to find plastic eggs for an egg hunt with no luck, and I also tried to do baskets for the kids, and while I had no trouble assembling small chocolate eggs, I struck out on the jelly beans and the marshmallow chicks. And I could never find baskets meant for Easter, either. After searching several high street stores for a suitable substitute, I decided to use the baskets that are holding various dusty fake-flower arrangements in our rental house. But when I went to remove the flowers, I saw that they were too tightly fastened with some kind of industrial-strength floral foam adhesive, and had to abandon my idea. In the end, I used two large salad bowls, which did a fine job of holding the candy but made for an anti-climactic end to the hunt through the house for the Easter baskets.
“We can’t find our baskets,” they said when they reached the end of the clues.
“They’re right there in my dressing room!” I said.
“Oh,” they said, “do you mean these salad bowls filled with candy?”
I was a bit curious about why, when they first saw them there, they didn’t find anything strange or out of the ordinary about the discovery that I was hoarding salad bowls full of candy in my dressing room, but didn’t ask…
The Catholic school did encourage the kids to participate in a few secular Easter customs on Easter Monday, but they were quite different from what we were accustomed to in the States. All the kids were asked to decorate one egg, and bring it in on Monday. Since there’s no egg dye here, the kids use stickers and sequins and Sharpies, and some of the eggs can get quite elaborate. In Kircaldy, I had spotted some beautiful blue organza, and came up with the incredibly bright idea of having Emma decorate two eggs: one to look like Prince William and one to look like Kate Middleton in her blue engagement dress. She and David worked on it for hours on Easter Sunday (while I was getting desserts ready for the Colgate students who were coming over later in the day…) and the results were fabulous! The kids had also been asked to decorate an “Easter bonnet,” though the school didn’t provide much instruction on this. So I had given Emma a straw cowboy hat to bedazzle with rhinestones and plastic eggs, while John took my invitation to decorate a bonnet by saying, “A bonnet!? I’m not doin’ that!” In the end, he taped some white octagon-shaped pieces of paper onto a black knit cap to look like a soccer ball, with the caveat that he would agree to bring it with him to school but would certainly not wear it! The school hosted a bonnet parade at 2:15 pm, and all the parents were invited, so I went to see what it was like. I was horrified to see that all the other kids’ bonnets were incredibly elaborate architecturally sound creations (I saw foam concoctions, home-sewn creations of meters-worth of batting, and I think one kid had even created a hat-version of the Leaning Tower of Pisa out of toothpicks!), and that Emma’s beautiful eggs were lined up with about FIFTY other Will-and-Kate-in-her-sapphire-blue-wrap-dress eggs! So much for my brilliant idea!
If we ever come to St. Andrews in the spring again, at least next time I will know how to do Easter the right way in Scotland!
No comments:
Post a Comment