O-mama - Opinionated Moms

• By Patricia Polacco • 10 Comments
• Tagged in: For Kids

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I absolutely love dyeing Easter eggs—always have.  I love that vinegar smell.  I love waiting and waiting for the color to get really dark and true.  I love painting fancy eggs with brushes and everything.  It’s honestly one of the few holiday traditions that I fully embrace.   Plus I love to eat hard boiled eggs and egg salad so we generally don’t waste too many of the dozens of eggs we color.  I love that even a really little kid can drop an egg into a cup of dye and wait a few seconds and then spoon it out or just reach in and grab it—dyeing their hands in the process.  I’ve shown my girls all the old techniques—dyeing eggs 2 tones—both horizontally and vertically, mixing colors—both in the cups and/or on the egg, making super pale eggs and then the darkest of darks.

When I was little my sisters and I would compete.  It wasn’t a voiced competition.  There was just a general undercurrent of awareness of whose basket of eggs was going to be the most colorful, the most beautiful.  Plus, I think the Easter bunny actually hid our hard boiled eggs back then instead of the plastic ones he hides now, so there was a real urgency to finding them because there’s really nothing like the eventual smell of an unfound Easter egg. 

I also remember one year my older sister dared me to drink the vinegar while we were mixing up the dye, “and not just a tiny sip either…a big gulp.”  So of course I did it; I think she said she would pay me because earlier in the day our Dad had taught us how to play Blackjack and she had won a few bucks. (Dyeing Easter eggs always makes me think of Blackjack too now that I think about it.) 

Not surprisingly, a giant gulp of vinegar was no treat and I think I actually drank pool water to calm my throat because it was the closest option.  Vinegar and chlorine—nice combo.  But even that semi-painful memory never took the shine off the dyeing tradition.  

My husband grew up celebrating Greek Easter with his cousins so he only dyes dark red eggs and then challenges people to “crack-offs” and shouts “Christos anesti!”  (Christ is risen!)  A “crack-off” basically means you just slam your egg into your cousin’s egg, and whoever’s egg doesn’t crack wins.  It seems to me like both eggs would crack but he claims not.  I also think he made up the term “crack-off” because it sounds dirty.

Patricia Polacco’s book Rachenka’s Eggs is a beautiful Easter story with absolutely stunning illustrations.  All her books are good, but this story is especially sweet. 

Polacco tells the tale of an old Russian woman who toils all year on her beautifully painted eggs to then enter them in an Easter contest in Moscow.  One cold Winter day, she saves a wounded goose who becomes her companion but then eventually accidentally breaks her eggs.  The magical goose then lays eggs to replace her broken ones—each egg more beautiful than the last.  Babushka’s magical eggs are by far the most wondrous of the festival, but soon the goose has healed and must fly away, but before she does, she lays one last egg—one more extraordinary than all the others.

The artwork in this book is truly amazing—one vivid Ukranian styled egg after another, and the story itself lends itself well to be read aloud.  It has a mystical, “folklorish” quality to it, and the demonstrations of  kindness and loyalty between Babushka and her goose are meaningful and an illustration of powerful and important character trait for young and old!   So yes, it’s an Easter story but without  all the pastels and crazy bunnies!  No religious arguments either—but plenty of “love thy neighbor” which is true pretty much across the religion board.