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Say the word Easter and here's where my mind goes: four days of church-going.
Memory: Entering the church on Good Friday to see purple velvet covering the fourteen Stations of the Cross and the large crucifix above the altar and the life-sized statues of Mary and Joseph that flanked the altar. I could never figure out who draped all that purple velvet. Probably the overworked nuns.
Memory: The Holy Saturday Mass performed with wooden clappers instead of tinkling bells.
Memory: A Holy Saturday litany sung by the priest at the back of the church (I was in the choir loft right above him, so I never knew exactly what he was doing). But whatever he was doing, he punctuated his chant with "Flectamus genua!" (let us bend our knee), a phrase that has rung in my mind all these years just because of the way it sounds. Flectamus genua!! When someone chants that at you, you don't need to be told twice to bend that knee. After we had all knelt, even those of us out of sight in the choir loft, he would chant "Levate!" ("Get up!" Or rather, "Rise.") And we did. And then he would chant some more and tell us again to bend our knee. This went on a long time, which may actually be the reason I've remembered it.
Memory: A lengthy foot-washing business at the altar, though I don't remember whether it happened on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, or Holy Saturday. Nor do I remember who did what to whom. I think maybe the priest washed the feet of the teenaged altar boys. Now there's a penance!
Memory: An Easter candle three feet tall and three inches in diameter, set in a holder that was itself three feet tall. The creamy white candle was decorated with colored wax designs pressed on to it. I found it beautiful.
Memory: The priest wearing once-a-year celebratory vestments. I remember a rose chasuble garment with much gold embroidery.
Memory: My mother, Eileen, never one to make life easy for herself, subscribed to the (Irish?) view that on Easter one should wear new clothes, from the inside out. So at some point during Holy Week she bought new socks, underwear, and shoes for each of her six children and she managed to sew dresses for the three girls (usually from the same bolt of fabric) and shirts for the three boys (also matching, but not matching the girls' dresses, I hope). She bought the boys' pants.
Memory: The church choir, composed, as I remember it, entirely of girls from "the big room" of the parochial school—that is, girls in grades 5 through 8. Some of whom could sing. There were about ten of us in all, unless I'm totally mis-remembering this. It can't have been pleasant sitting in those hard pews listening to ten untrained pre-pubescent voices singing their version of Gregorian chant, accompanied by a wheezing organ.
Memory: The choir on Easter Sunday, which for me was the culmination of the choir experience because we sang my favorite hymn:
"The DAWN comes purpling o'er the SKY-EYE,
While AL-leluias filled the AI-
The EARTH held glorious jubilEE-EE,
Hell GNASHED its teeth in fierce de-SPAIR."
This was the verse. The chorus, a series of vigorous alleluias, was followed by another two pot-boiling verses that I have mercifully forgotten.
I'd like to say that the reason I loved it (you have to admit it has a certain panache) was the challenge of picturing "Hell" gnashing "its" teeth. What exactly would that look like? But I think the real reason I liked it was its punchy, vibrant rhythm.
Memory: When Easter Sunday Mass was over, we all went home in our new finery, had our pictures taken with a little brownie camera, and ate a ham dinner.
This completes the litany of Easter memories from my childhood.
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