Easter Week practices for Families

"So it is right and proper that we celebrate the days of Easter with joy. I will admit to having kept my children out of school on Easter Monday for years. The school holidays before Easter were steeped in preparation and anticipation. Now we needed time for rejoicing. I think the children liked that Monday holiday especially; it was so unlike us to take a "well day" off work and school.

On Easter Monday we have gone to an early Mass to hear the delightful gospel and Alleluias again. Then we have always found a body of water to visit and enjoy -- a river, a lake, a stream, the marshes -- fresh, life-giving waters like that which were blessed at the Easter Vigil, like the waters of our baptism which we remember at this time. The story Emmaus seems to inspire a walk in nature. We see the evidence of transformation all around us in the new green of springtime.

When the children were small we would plan to meet another family or two, usually by the marsh waters near our home. That was the favorite Easter Monday picnic place. The marsh birds were actively expressing their rites of spring and with bird books and field glasses we would identify them and watch them nest. Sometimes there were baby ducks to feed.

Always we got wet. We learned about the traditions of getting wet on Easter Monday first from a favorite children't book which we have read and reread for years especially at Eastertime. The Good Master by Kate Serdy tells of an Hungarian family, and the accounts of their Easter celebrations especially caught our interest. On Easter Monday, the young boys of the Hungarian villages went from house to house, and wherever young girls lived, they came up to the door, recited a blessing and then splashed the girls with water. The girls in turn invited them in and everyone feasted on Easter specialties, and the girsl gave the boys some of their carefully painted eggs to take home. On Easter Tuesday they replayed the whole game in reverse.

Then a Polish friend of mine surprised me one Easter Monday morning with such a wet blessing, and 'it took.' Our children felt so inspired that it has become a part of our Easter Monday rites at the water's edge."

GERTRUD MUELLER NELSON