Friends of ASCCA: How Windsor Celebrates Easter

As the temperature warms up and flowers start to bloom, spring and Easter are coming soon. How do you celebrate Easter in your family? Everyone celebrates Easter differently, but my family and I enjoy certain Easter traditions, treats, movies, and television shows.

When my siblings and I were little, we always colored Easter eggs a day or two before Easter. I don’t really remember coloring the eggs because this was before my surgery, but I do recall one time. My dad put a Bandaid on his egg to act like painter’s tape to make a design, but it got so wet that it only left a weird Bandaid mark on his egg. 

My sisters tell me that the Easter bunny would pick out his favorite colored eggs from our bunch and place them in our Easter baskets. Each one of us had a unique basket given to us by Mama Lois, my grandmother on my dad’s side, and we used them for years. The Easter bunny never brought us pre-packaged baskets, but instead filled our baskets with chocolate eggs, a solid chocolate bunny, and usually a few gifts to share. One year we got a pop tent, and another time we got several VeggieTales videos. We still get a solid chocolate bunny even now as adults.

Those VeggieTales shows are still part of our Easter tradition today. In fact, this Easter, we will watch “Rack, Shack and Benny,” which deals with the topic of handling peer pressure as the biblical story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego from the Book of Daniel is retold with vegetable characters. We consider it an Easter story because of “The Bunny Song,” the revised version sung by Mr. Nezzar, and because of the chocolate bunnies they make in their factory. However, instead of watching the orange VHS tapes, which tell you how old they were, we watch the show now on iTunes.

Every Easter we make birds’ nests with Hershey’s chocolate eggs inside them. Birds’ nests are made with semi-sweet chocolate morsels and butterscotch morsels melted and stirred together with chow mein noodles. We scoop out spoonfuls to cool onto wax paper and then add the chocolate eggs to decorate. The birds’ nests are so delicious! Here is the recipe:

Ingredients: 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels, 1 cup butterscotch morsels, 3 cups chow mein noodles

Directions:

1. Melt chocolate and butterscotch morsels in the microwave, stirring every 30 seconds until melted. 
2. Stir in noodles gently.
3. Spoon onto wax paper.
4. Form haystacks into little “nests” and put three jelly beans or candy chocolate eggs in each one to be the eggs.
5. Let cool. Makes about 40 haystacks. 
6. Store with wax paper between layers of haystacks to keep them from sticking together.
7. Enjoy!

Of course, all of our traditions are mixed with activities to remind us of the reason we celebrate Easter: Jesus’s sacrifice for the sinners in the world. Easter just so happens to be one of my favorite religious holidays, partly because the focus is not so much on giving gifts. Plus, I love doing festive crafts that have to do with Easter. I always cannot wait to celebrate and do our traditions every time spring rolls around. At Camp ASCCA I would like to hear your favorite ways to celebrate Easter as well.