By Suzanna Leigh
Resplendent in a blue brocade robe she brought back from the Orient, Marj presides over Easter dinner. A widow now, she is the matriarch who sits at the head of the table and blesses the food.
“Lord of the Universe,” she begins, “Thank you allowing us to live in this beautiful place.” She looks around the table where four generations are seated, and continues, “Thank you that we are once again gathered together. Please let there be peace in the world. Amen.”
The feast is a potluck affair; my sister Jeannie and her husband Don and son Morgan have come up from Oregon, bringing pies and gluten-free rolls. My son Atom and his son have brought roasted vegetables. My brother John contributes a special tea, and my son Jeremy has brought the cheeses his vegetarian child loves. I provide the roast beast and potatoes. My brother Steve has made a delicious salad. My husband Rich/Rifaat has contributed the very best olive oil and vinegar for the dressing. My son James whips the cream for the pies, and my niece Amber, up from Oregon with her daughter Penny, has done the last-minute shopping.
Conversation centers around books we’ve read, movies we’ve seen, the kid’s favorite video games. Puns abound, and Google is handy to look up word definitions or check facts.
I can remember growing up coloring Easter eggs with food coloring and vinegar, hunting for colorful eggs in the grass, finding Easter baskets waiting for us when we got up on Easter morning. I always wondered what baskets of chocolate Easter bunnies and jelly beans had to do with the Resurrection.
I thought maybe back in the early days of Christianity, the Church had combined the celebration of the Risen Christ with the Jewish holiday of Purim. Purim honors Queen Esther and the delivery of the Jewish people from certain death. Easter and Esther sound so much alike! But still, where did the bunnies and Easter eggs come from?
I made another connection this spring, when my neighbor Hope invited me to a gathering of women to honor Ostara, the goddess of spring and new life.
I had never heard of Ostara, so I did some research.
Turns out that people from Ireland to Germany honored Ostara. Her holiday was on the spring equinox, and was celebrated with feasting. Rabbits and eggs were her symbols; rabbits for their many offspring, and eggs because they contain life. I can imagine the hens, set free to feast on spring greens and newly awakened insects, laying their eggs in the tall grass, and the children being sent out in the morning to find them. Finding the eggs would be like finding little treasures!
My Seventh Day Adventist relatives did not celebrate Easter; they said it was a Pagan holiday. I don’t look at it that way. I feel that these holidays that predate Christianity are born from our very human need to mark and celebrate the season’s changes. It thrills me to honor the Divine in the form of Ostara, about the same time I remember the Resurrection. It fits, somehow, the conquest of life over death.
These days, we get the same vegetables year-round, even if they are imported from Mexico or grown in greenhouses. What if our roasted vegetable dish included only vegetables that would be available in early spring a thousand years ago? My guess it would include root vegetables that have been stored over winter, and maybe some fern fiddleheads.
Roasted Vegetables, Olde Style
2-3 carrots
1 large parsnip
The last of the stored onions
1 beet
Maybe some dandelion root and fern fiddleheads
3-4 whole garlic cloves
Cut the vegetables into chunks about 1-1½” (My family will insist on including potatoes). Smear a layer of olive oil in a roasting pan. Add the vegetables, including the garlic, in a layer, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour.
Of course there would be a salad with spring greens such as sorrel, chickweed, and dandelion (not the imposter with fuzzy spiky leaves).
Enjoy a spring feast that has been celebrated since time before memory!
