Do you bless your eggs?

You know I have always thought of myself as a pretty smart person. I mean sometimes I'm gullible but I figure I'm a well read, rounded and for the most part street savvy girl. I mean I did grow up in Chicago, and maybe that was the problem. Granted I came to the US when I was 6 yrs old so I grew up here and I'm pretty aware of all of our customs. But if you know anything about Chicago, besides that its the windy city, the land of mobsters and the mag mile, is that it's the largest population of Polish people outside of Warsaw (for those that don't know thats the capitol of Poland). I believe it too. If you are a polack, and trust me I can say polack, as its not used a derogatory word when used by a polish person; we'll get into this some other day, when in Poland there are mostly 4 places we immigrate too on a large scale basis. Chicago, New York/New Jersey (counts as 1) Canada I know this is a little broad, and Australia.

So growing up in Chicago is essentially like growing up in Poland. I went to polish school to learn to read, write and history on Saturday, I went to polish highlander dancing on Saturday night, we went to polish mass, we shopped at the polish deli, we hung around with polacks, and so on and so forth. So when I got my first real job in the industry, I was working with people that had many different backgrounds. Religious and nationality.

Imagine my disbelief that everyone didn't celebrate the holiday the same way we do. I innocently asked another catholic at work "so are you gonna get your eggs blessed this saturday?" He being a male guffawed and first thought of his own eggs, "not those, I meant your EGGS, and your sausage, and your bread in your basket!"

HUH?!?!

I think thats when it really hit me, I mean; I went to art school, hung out with people of different cultures and religions, but I guess easter and blessing of the baskets was never a subject that we talked about. I was surprised to hear that even my italian american Catholic friend didn't celebrate this tradition. I honestly thought that this was a Catholic tradition and not just polish, being that every year the saturday before easter it was not just polacks that came to church it was other americans with their Easter baskets filled with wonderful smells of kielbasa, bread, butter in the shape of a lamb, horseradish and of course dyed eggs covered with a lace doily waiting for your chance to get your basket blessed by the holy water.

I have come to realize that its only a polish tradition not a catholic one, and I love it. My daughter is half filipino and although they are a very catholic country, they don't celebrate this holiday quite the same. But one thing I know for sure is that she will grow up getting her easter basket blessed with kielbasa and eggs and hopefully keep this tradition and pass it on to her children one day.

But however you celebrated your easter, with a tradition of blessing or a tradition of hunting I hope it was a good one.

And I might be that last person showing this but I had to share with anyone who hadn't had a chance to see this. Slovenian artist Franc Grom drills a hole in an empty egg shell in Vrhnika, Slovenia on April 9, 2009. Grom drills thousands of holes into egg shells to create unique Easter eggs of fragile beauty.