Holiday Feasts

Last weekend was a busy one for our interfaith family. Major holidays for both Jews and Christians came almost together. The first night of Passover and Easter fell on the same weekend and we feasted in celebration of both.

Passover began on Friday evening. We hosted a seder—a meal and ceremony in one that tells the story of Passover with a dinner. We didn’t have a huge crowd. It was only the three of us plus my sister-in-law Andrea and her two daughters. Even for a small number of people a seder is a big deal. It needs to be a special meal. Jennifer, as always with holiday meals, did a wonderful job. The kitchen was filled with delicious smells all afternoon and everything tasted just as good. I’ll admit that I wasn’t as much help as I might have been. I had a great deal of work to do for school and I didn’t have much time to assist Jennifer with the cooking. I did do the shopping and some cleaning before and after the event so I won’t claim to have been useless, just busy with other things. Though I am not Jewish the Passover seder has become one of the things that I look forward to every year. It comes at season when I often need a little cheering up and it has also given me some great snapshot moments that help me enjoy my daughter growing up. Each year she gets a little more deeply into the ritual and more adult in the way she enjoys her meal.

Easter was the joyous day for me that it should be. I went to church in the morning and thoroughly enjoyed the service. As always I went alone. The downside to being part of interfaith family is that I can’t share everything that I love with my family. Other parts of our celebration of Easter are generally low key. Sometimes we dye eggs but not this year. Maura did get some chocolate from the Easter Bunny and Jennifer bought some Peeps to share with her. They can have them. Peeps are one Easter tradition I can do without.

In the afternoon we went to our friends the Tittlers’ for Easter dinner. Julie does a dinner on Easter that is anything but low key and I feel privileged to have been invited to share it more than once. Julie cooks a traditional Polish Easter feast and it is a treat. I think I would like to visit Poland someday. I know I would enjoy the local food. Even better than the food was the company. We often get together with the Tittlers but we don’t always have the chance to linger at the table and talk for hours which we did on Sunday. Our friend Jeremy was the fourth guest at the Tittlers’ table and he always has interesting things to say. Along the way we had an Easter egg hunt for the kids. The men hid the eggs in the yard for the three children to find. Maura found hers quickly but afterwards she helped the Tittlers’ youngest find the remainder of hers. She even rehid a few of the one’s she had found when we realized there were not as many eggs as we had thought there were. I was very proud of her when she did that.