Previously I told you about how I celebrate Easter now, but what I meant to tell you about was how I celebrated Easter when I was a child. The first thing you need to know is that I grew up in Echo Park, an area of old Los Angeles where immigrants still live because it’s run down and relatively inexpensive. By relatively inexpensive, I mean what you pay for a 500-square foot, 100-year old abode on a crowded hillside is what you would pay for a 5,000-square foot 20-room mansion in Texas. One of my cousins settled in Echo Park at the turn of the 20th Century and then around 1908 my grandparents settled there. From then on until I finished college, everyone on Echo Park Avenue and its environs was a relative. If someone came from the same village in Poland, they were a relative. If someone happened to be from Baltimore but they lived between relatives, they were still called Aunt or Uncle somebody. We were surrounded by Jewish relatives, none of whom ever went to Temple. Grandfather Samuel studied to be a Rabbi, decided it was all nonsense, and became an atheist. This never stopped the men from arguing about biblical history after dinner, but it did mean I never stepped inside a Jewish temple until after I was married. I discovered I was Jewish when I was in first grade. We were being taught Christmas carols. I came home and announced to my parents that since I knew how to sing Christmas carols, and Christmas was for Christians, I was therefore a Christian. There are many parts of my life that were very confusing to me and they certainly began far earlier than first grade, but this one was a corker. My parents said quite sternly, NO, you are not Christian, you are Jewish. Jewish people are different and we do not sing Christmas carols. The next day at school, armed with this new knowledge of my special standing, I announced to my teacher that I could not sing with the class because I’m Jewish. She said fine, don’t sing, just sit quietly while the rest of the class sings. One day of sitting silently was all it took to convince me I’d rather play with my peers than not. So I shut up about being Jewish, sang the carols with devout gusto, and was happy to know that my parents would never show up for the school Christmas pageant and none of my playmates understood enough to rat me out. This incident did, however, instill in me the puzzling notion that I was somehow different; My parents said Jews were different; they just neglected to explain why. To make things even more confusing, my parents were at war with each other about Gentile holidays. My mother was surrounded by her atheist relatives up and down the street. Something terrible would happen if she had a Christmas tree in her house. Grandfather would find out and be furious, so she was adamantly opposed to the very notion. One year I tried to convince her to let me have a little tree I could hide behind the couch when Grandpa came over, which he never ever did. My arguments were in vain. On the other hand, she was happy to give me presents whenever they had two cents to rub together. She would pile up the area in front of the fireplace with gifts for me to open on Christmas morning. These gifts had nothing to do with G-d. Mother was a devout atheist. My father didn’t mind having a Christmas tree. He said “Why should she miss out on anything just because of religion?” Father liked G-d. He just detested all religions. He was a closeted agnostic. Apparently when my sister was little my father won, and they had Christmas trees, but that was before they moved to Echo Park. I seem to remember one, but mostly our non-functional fireplace was the repository for a gift or two when we were poor and an overflowing cascade of presents when we had money. One year when we really didn’t have any money and there were no gifts, I broke off a branch of a fir tree and stuck it in a coffee can filled with dirt and made paper decorations to hang from its branches. You know what happens to a tree limb after a week of being stuck in dirt? It dies. The fir leaves fall off and so do the paper decorations and all you have left is a sad stick and a can full of mud. This Maxwell House coffee can Christmas tree was my attempt at proving to myself that I could be just as happy with less than with more. However, all it did was make me feel sorry for myself, so I snuck it out of the house as stealthily as I had snuck it in. That was the end of Christmas trees for me until I met my first husband, who insisted we had to have one and taped a hand-made aluminum foil Star of David on top of the tree he dragged into the house without my mother’s permission. He did things like that. What does Christmas have to do with Easter, you ask? Everything. You know now about the tug-of-war my parents had between wanting me to have what all the other kids had yet not wanting to bring Christian holidays into our home. If you’re lucky, you’ll never have to understand the confusion of 1) being told you’re Jewish but don’t tell anybody because they will hurt you, 2) huge family feasts during all the high holidays, and 3) simultaneously being told all religions are folly. My parents’ solution was to eliminate religion and stick with presents. Ma was not very good at wrapping gifts or hiding them. I think it bored her. Hence the wall of fireplace presents at Christmas. Easter was even easier for her. Every year she would fill two baskets with candies of all sizes and shapes tucked into straw bedding and hide them behind the curtains that flanked the fireplace, one basket at each side of the mantle. She also hid many large sugar-filled candy eggs in obvious places. That was great fun for the first few years. Then even I got bored. I still liked the baskets but I complained to her that she wasn’t hiding the eggs well enough. She decided to show me who was the boss. Twenty-five years later, when they sold the house and we were clearing out the walk-in pantry, I found three Easter eggs tucked behind the milkshake mixer at the very back corner of the top shelf. They still were solidly intact, untouched by ants or roaches. I guess that says something about the composition of 1950s sugar-filled Easter eggs.