With Easter Monday, I remember Christmas of my childhood and remember what this particular celebration.
I begin this post by a quote from the writer Marie Darrieussecq that I find interesting:
In a family, we may well have experienced the same things we did not have the same memories.
is very true and I, if some family members of my generation read me, or even friends who lived in roughly the same parties, they give me their opinion or remind me their personal memories.
I will talk mainly about the feast of Easter all of my younger years, those where I started to make and store memories, good or bad, that certain words, certain odors, Some images are up to the surface, sometimes with considerable nostalgia and at the same time a great joy to remember them.
Why now? Why this urge to write them down on paper?
simply at the sight of a report by France 2 television news on the celebration of Easter in some villages of Alsace. I
magazine, young child, the cottage of my grandparents in a tiny village deep in the Ardennes, named La Fosse, with no more than twenty small farmhouses.
The country home of my paternal grandparents were located outside the village, on a hill overlooking a magnificent landscape of meadows and pine forests, and was built in an immense garden of one hectare with an old ruined tower, a majestic alley of centuries-old trees leading to the entrance, a large meadow with a grove in the background, ideal field of games for children. About
until my teens, the family were in this cottage for weekends or holidays of Christmas and Easter.
was an opportunity for my sister, my brother and myself to find my cousins and live wonderful moments of complicity sharing "secrets" of shifting alliances with one or the other, depending on the affinity or disagreements of the moment!
Furthermore, for us urban children accustomed to comfort and ease, the life there, and so much more rustic than that of the city adds to our happiness of children. We sometimes take for settlers living in the wilderness and hostile, especially when the night sleeping cozily in a bed warmed by a hot water bottle prepared by my grandmother, we heard the "whoo whoo" frightening Grand Duke nesting in the pines!
This long preamble to recall the mood and the joy that we experienced during these holidays!
Now we come to the party itself.
whole week before Easter Sunday we were waiting anxiously to discover in this garden (weather was not the rain) chocolate eggs and other candies made and "thrown" by returning the bells of Rome ! ("They were parties at the beginning of Holy Week and only returned on Easter Sunday and then struck at random in toues churches in the country.")
During Holy Week, our grandmother baked a lot hard-boiled eggs that we color paint and who better to best. The Saturday before
the big day, the village children, rode to the house shaking rattles and singing came the resurrection people to the next city we were, "species" a little weird for them!
This custom persists in many villages of Alsace, and so it while watching TV and reviewing this ancient habit that I remembered my Easter girl.
We were a family of non-practicing believers and the religious dimension of the festival was a bit "zappée" home.
But the traditions of gifts to children and meals including the Passover lamb had been met.
So what joy to go to bed Saturday night with the hope of finding the wonders the next morning. That difficulty in falling asleep, and no trouble getting up early that day, too early even for our parents who would have stayed a little longer in bed!
And then, with his hand the wicker basket delivered to each of our grandmother, we were running in all directions, searching every bush, behind every tree, and it was he who found the first hiding place, and who cry the loudest to mark its astonishment and joy.
What do we keep our child's soul and the wonder caused by some parties! But it must grow, face life and its difficulties. But deep inside us, we still have that little spark and we try to find it with our children and our grandchildren, and so much better.
There, a small t that makes me younger than 50 years. I have many more memories of holidays thrilled I tell you later so that my children and grandchildren to discover that we too have been children!
next time I speak of St. Nicolas, large children's festival in Belgium and eastern France as well.
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