By allowing ads to appear on this site, you support the local businesses who, in turn, support local journalism.
The color revival of Easter
Placeholder Image

My childhood was marked by two time periods.

The time I got Easter baskets and the time they stopped.

Those earlier years gave me brightly colored baskets filled with shiny green Easter grass as enduring as glitter and some hardened marshmallow eggs wrapped in cellophane.

The Easter Bunny apparently was in cahoots with the dentist and wanted to give me enough cavities to last until Halloween.

I loved those baskets.

The candy may have been disgusting but there was something about the bright colors mixed with pastels that signaled spring and new beginnings.

Plus, it took forever - literally, forever - for Easter to arrive.

At least it felt that way when you were a kid and you had gone through all the other holidays.

And Easter meant a nice new looking dress and some white shoes.

I yearned for the white shoes as much as I did the basket full of candy.

How I waited all year for those shoes.

They were special.

Ugly little shoes, but special none the less.

I was beyond excited about my little white shoes and my basket.

Even the dress that made me look like an Easter egg seemed like a princess gown.

There was even, on occasion, a little hat Mama stuck on my head after pulling my hair back into some tight bun.

"You need a bonnet for Easter," she would say as it felt like she was stapling the thing to my scalp.

Then as much as it had been a part of the springs of my youth, it suddenly stopped.

"You're too old for an Easter basket this year," Granny declared one day out of the blue.

I was shocked. Was there an age limit on Easter?

"And you're too old for white shoes, too," she added.

No shoes?

Why couldn't I wear white shoes?

"'Cause they don't look right," she told me.

Granny considered herself the authority on Southern fashion and most of her rules involved when one could wear white.

Heaven forbid I even think of wearing white in the winter; she and Mama both would have a fit. White on anything was only to be worn from Easter to Labor Day.

With an unceremonious declaration, all of that had changed.

I felt like there was a huge void to wake up and not see a basket awaiting me.

My dresses went from frothy things with ribbons and lace to being kind of plain. Or worse - a floral print.

And now, those traditions seem gone for good.

"I'm too old for a basket now," Cole told me a few years back when I was looking at Easter decorations.

"You're not," I said. Why would a child want to miss out on an Easter basket?

"I am. I don't eat candy anymore, so it's not really that fun anymore."

I was just as disappointed as the day Granny told me I was too old. Plus, he evidently forgot I may want the candy.

I didn't feel like he was too old but maybe part of Easter's heralding of spring was the changing seasons in our own lives.

We stop the traditions we once did - the baskets, the white shoes, the heavily ornate Easter outfits - and move into new routines that fit where we are now.

I kind of miss it though.

Last year, I think I wore dress pants on Easter. They were black. Pretty sure my shoes were, too.
It didn't feel the same.

I missed the watercolor world that Easter used to be.

Maybe I would get Cole a basket after all. Heck, maybe I'd get everyone a basket.

And while I was at it, I'd even try to find a pair of white shoes.

Sudie Crouch is an award winning humor columnist and author of the novel, "The Dahlman Files: A Tony Dahlman Paranormal Mystery."