Growing up Easter was a huge event. As a little girl the fuss my mother made over my Easter & Palm Sunday dresses & shoes was enough for me to proclaim it as my favorite time of year. My siblings & I were always dressed to the nines on those two days and on Palm Sunday I carried, what seemed, the most colossal and intricately molded candle adorned with the most beautiful of satin bows.
Even as a child, Easter Sunday signaled a new beginning. That Sunday, meant we were celebrating a newness. A rebirth of the seasons. A looking forward to sunny beautiful days ahead, spent in the beautiful mountains of Lebanon or on the beach with our cousins.
This feeling of newness & hope, reverberated in everything that my mother did to the lead up to Easter Sunday & culminated in our Sunday feast. Our Easter brunch table was made up of colored eggs, rose water infused rice pudding, home made string cheese, brioche bread & the intricately decorated & time consuming “maamoul” cookies. These cookies were the main attraction, & my mom had a knack of making the sweet semolina outer layer so buttery & flaky that from that fist bite you were hooked. She would stuff them with date paste, which were my favorites or chopped walnuts.
Today, as the world starts to look at the pandemic through a rear view mirror, this Easter is even more poignant. It comes at a time when as a world we collectively abstained from our daily indulgences & fasted from even the simplest of pleasures mainly our own freedoms and the loss of touching & seeing our loved ones.
Just as with Easter Sunday, I’m hopeful that this loss will lead us into something new & that the time locked away & spent reflecting inwards, we have shed many bad habits to enable us to die in our old ways of living & resurrect into our new ones.
So, let this Easter be a celebration not just to the people who believe in Christ but for all humankind. May it be the start of a new beginning that brings a rebirth of a new found bond in the human race, where the simple pleasures of life become cherished again, steeped in a blind belief that as human beings, we shall all, Rise, again.
Wishing you a Blessed Easter 🐣