 ~ MRS. SHARP'S TRADITIONS ~  NOTE: The entire text below is taken directly from the book Mrs. Sharp’s Traditions. I cannot take credit in any form for the ideas and creativity on this page unless so noted. The book is written by Sarah Ban Breathnach and is currently out of print. If you can find a copy (the softcover version is called Victorian Family Celebrations), definitely grab it and run…and DON’T lend it to a friend because you’ll probably never get it back! April is a saucy flirt, beckoning the family outdoors with bright sunshine smiles and then, in a temper tantrum, sending us all rushing back indoors dripping wet from her mercurial showers. That’s why our favorite April amusements are both indoors as well as out. Among the April pleasures awaiting Mrs. Sharp’s family: a festive All Fool’s Day dinner, an observance of Arbor Day, and the joys of a well-stocked Rainy Day Cupboard. Eastertide usually comes this month with a week-long celebration of painted eggs, hot cross buns, decorating new bonnets, and putting up our beloved Easter egg tree, creating Easter nests in the backyard, and hosting an old-fashioned egg hunt for the children and their friends. Finally, we will look at the Jewish celebration of Passover. A file of old Christmas cards, postcards, fancy magazines, seed catalogues, and old calendars for cutting up A variety of small paper bags Art supplies: special crayons, paints, and colored pencils Bag of stuffing for soft toys or puppet heads Beads for stringing Bits of wood, sandpaper Cellophane tape, double-sided sticky tape Colored index cards Discarded rolls of wallpaper Egg cartons Elastic Empty aluminum, disposable muffin tins Empty matchboxes Empty scrapbooks or blank artists’ sketchbooks Empty spools from thread Empty Styrofoam meat trays Envelopes Feathers Glue, paper paste Modeling clay Natural materials: pinecones, small twigs, large flat, smooth stones and shells collected on nature excursions Odd buttons Pieces of colored felt Pipe cleaners Popsicle sticks Scissors Sheets of interesting or pretty wrapping paper Small bells Small boxes Soap for carving Stickers Stiff cardboard String Tiny scraps of interesting fabrics such as lace, fur, velvet and corduroy Yarn and odd balls of wool The celebration of Easter in America was introduced by German Protestant immigrants in the mid 1700s, but Easter was not widely celebrated here until after the Civil War when its theme of resurrection and renewed hope could offer the bereaved new meaning during the years of Reconstruction. In Mrs. Sharp’s home,our family celebration of Eastertide begins on Palm Sunday witht he children’s procession of palm stick crosses; at Mrs. Sharp’s we invite friends over in the afternoon for a backyard procession. Each palm stick cross is as unique as its little creator, but the basics begin with two dowels lashed together as a cross and secured with craft wire. Now let each child add greenery, such as boxwood, palms, spring flowers, and colored ribbon streamers. Finally each cross is topped off with a bread-dough chick. Use your favorite bread dough (refrigerated breakfast-roll dough also works well) to form a small round bun, then pull out a head and beak and add a raisin for the eye. To give the chicky a shiny coat, brush on egg yolk-and-water glaze on it just before baking. The children know Easter is almost here when Mrs. Sharp begins making hot cross buns on Good Friday. MRS. SHARP’S HOT CROSS BUNS 2 packages dry yeast 1/3 cup sugar 2/3 cup milk, scalded 3 ½ cups all purpose flour ½ cup melted butter 3 eggs, beaten 2/3 cups currants ½ teaspoon cinnamon 1 egg white Soften yeast in warm water. Dissolve sugar in scalded milk. Let milk cool, then combine 1 cup of flour, yeast, and milk-sugar mixture together. Beat together. Add butter, salt, eggs, and remaining flour. Hand beat until light (about 5 minutes). Cover with damn dish towel, set in a warm spot, and let rise until doubled (about 1 hour). Beat down and then add currants and cinnamon. Roll dough ½ inch thick on a floured dough. Shape into buns (or cut into circles using a small juice glass). Place on a greased baking sheet. Cover and let rise for about 30 minutes or until dough feels springy and is about double in size. Cut a deep cross into the top of each bun with a sharp knife. Brush with slightly beaten egg white. Bake at 350 degrees for 12-14 minutes. To make a glaze, dissolve 4 teaspoons granulated sugar in 6 tablespoons of milk and boil for 2 minutes. Brush warm buns twice with this syrup to glaze. NATURAL EASTER NESTS ~ The day before Easter, one of the lovliest Victorian traditions Mrs. Sharps’s children enjoy is the creating of the Easter egg nest for the Easter Hare. Each child prepares his or her own next in the backyard for the Easter Bunny to leave his treasures for the children. To create the nests the children gather flowers, grasses, twigs and other natural materials, then add colored ribbons, paper grass, or shredded tissue paper. The next morning they find their Easter baskets in their nests. EGG HUNT & EGG ROLL PARTY ~ Let each of the children invite a couple of friends over on Easter Monday and tell them each to bring over an empty basket. Instead of dyeing eggs for large groups of children, Mrs. Sharp uses plastic eggs, which she fills with candy; plan on four eggs per child. Count how many eggs you are hiding around the backyard before depositing them. This way you’ll know when the hunt is officially over. To make the hunt fair, Mrs. Sharp divides the children into two age groups. We have the older children search in one part of the yard and the little ones in another. Before the hunt begins, explain some simple rules: each child must stop after finding four eggs, and there is no fighting over the eggs. Mrs. Sharp also hides two gold-foil-wrapped eggs (one for each age group). The finders of the golden eggs receive a small chocolate bunny as a prize. After the hunt is over, have everyone head out to the drive or street (which is closed off to traffic). Now it is the time for the Easter egg roll. Divide the children into two age groups. For the younger children, mark out with chalk a straight path about 8 feet long; for the older children it is fun to curve the pathway. Give each of the children a long-handled spoon to push hard-boiled eggs inside the pathway. Anyone whose egg crosses out of the chalk lines is out. The first egg across the finish line wins. Now it is time for a picnic of egg-salad sandwiches, cookies and lemonade! No spring interlude would be complete without an afternoon of hat decorating, Mrs. Sharp’s family’s last Easter tradition. You will need plain straw hat bases, colors of hat veiling, trim, flowers, feathers and ribbon. Then our fun begins! At the end of the happy afternoon we have an Easter bonnet parade before a festive tea party at which Father and the boys join us, provided compliments on our handiwork accompany them! For over 3,000 years Jewish families around the world have been gathering together in the springtime to observe one of the oldest festivals in existence, Passover or Pesach, which commemorates the deliverance of the Israelites from slavery under the Pharaoh and their departure with Moses in search of the Promised Land. Passover is a solemn but joyful eight-day celebration that begins on the eve of the 14th day in the Jewish month Nisan with a festive seder dinner in the home. During the seder dinner, the youngest child asks 3 historical questions and the family then listens in rapt attention to a reading of the Haggadah that vividly recounts the Exodus from Egypt. Unleavened bread, known as matzoh, is eaten to symbolize the haste with which the Jewish people fled into the wilderness. Bitter herbs or maror is served as a reminder of the harshness of slavery. Haroset, a mixture of sweet fruits and nuts, commemorates the mortar the Jewish slaves used in building the pyramids in Egypt. "For many people of all ethnic groups, holidays are the last ties binding them to their family and their tradition," writes Joan Nathan in her wonderful cookbooks, The Jewish Holiday Kitchen and The Children's Jewish Holiday Kitchen (view these titles available for purchase at Books.com by clicking here). "This is even more true for the Jews, given the importance of our dietary laws and the table-centered rituals involved in the Sabbath and holidays." WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO?
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