There are a bunch of holidays I never celebrated before moving to Europe.
Easter is one of them.
Some of the customs are fun like colored eggs.
These can be of chocolate wrapped in bright aluminum foil,
or hard boiled chicken eggs colored with food coloring
or big goose eggs with a whole at each egg for blowing out the raw egg
to then be intricately batiked.
Others are enormously moving like JS Bach's Passions.
I sang in the Bad Hersfeld Festspiel Choir for 10 years,
all of the major choir works.
But Bach was best.
And St Matthew's Passion sung or heard in an old church
is otherworldly,
close to God.
In 1983, long before anyone could dream that „the Wall“ would ever
come down again, I took an Easter trip to the other side with
Lothar and Uta and Max. Four guys in a Renault 4
Wartburg, Weimar, Gotha, Dresden, Prague, Karlstein.
Looking for adjectives, the best one is grey.
Lothar's birthday was that Easter in Praque
Bare but sunny and cold .
Uta and I sang a very scratchy birthday song
and I gave him the only thing I could find to buy
- a basket full of batiked eggs.
Six years later, a month after The Wall came down
I sang Bach's Christmas Oratorio with the Praguer Symphony
in an icy church packed with free people.
Traditionally, in our small family of two,
we do a Sunday brunch on Easter morning with
colors and delicious tidbits and Anna Thomas's Chalah Egg Bread.
Make a yeast dough
with the addition of 2 whole eggs and 2 Tbs of butter.
Let it rise twice.
Now make two braids, the one on the bottom a little larger
than the one on the top.
Brush with egg yolk, sprinkle with sesame seeds
and let it rise again for another half hour.
Bake for 45 minutes at 375'F or 180C'
