In your Easter bonnet Still Got Cotton in My Blood
Growing up in the ’50s in Rome and Lindale during the Easter season was an event only surpassed by Christmas, and not by much.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The question is, how did this happen? Y’all know I’m going to add a little history. We’ll use it as a teaching tool, ’cause truthfully I doubt if many folks remember, I sure didn’t.
In the Dark Ages, believers would gather in a solemn spot before Easter services and walk solemnly to the church. After services they would retrace their steps singing praises. They had a two-fold purpose in their marching. First, they wanted to demonstrate the unity of their faith, and second was to reach non-believers in a highly visible manner.
In the Middle Ages, the clergy expanded these processions into teaching tools. They would have paintings and statues placed along the parade route where members would be walking. The church members could walk from one to another to see all the “Stations of the Cross.”
To those that had no access to a Bible and didn’t understand Latin, this helped them understand their faith.
Constantine I, Emperor of Rome, in the early part of the fourth century ordered subjects to dress in their finest clothes and parade in honor of Christ’s Resurrection.
However, in Tudor times a superstition originated which claimed that unless a person had new homespun cloth available at Easter, moths and crickets would eat his old clothes, and destructive rooks would nest in large numbers around the residence.
The Irish added a vestige that stated “For Christmas, food and drink; for Easter, new clothes.”
And a 15th century proverb from “Poor Robin’s Almanac” states that if on Easter Sunday some part of the outfit is not new, one will not enjoy good luck during the year.
We find that German settlers in Pennsylvania as early as 1782 were parading on Easter Monday, which was widely celebrated as a holiday. They continued their parading for well over a century.
Then it happened. In 1870, ladies in the congregations of several churches along New York’s Fifth Avenue began decorating the churches with fresh flowers. In a newspaper column, it was noted that over half of the congregation of the church’s female members were decked out in their best finery.
The traditionalists in the churches resisted changes, but to no avail.
It only took a few years before the ladies and escorts began walking to the other churches to see their floral arrangements, and to be seen. This took place between 49th Street and 57th Street on Fifth Avenue.
In 1875, the Easter Parade was barely a mention. But by 1900 it was rivaling Christmas as a merchant’s dream, and was spreading to other cities across the land.
In 1933 Irving Berlin wrote a song for a revue called “As Thousands Cheer,” and in the revue was a song titled “Easter Parade.” Fifteen years later Judy Garland and Fred Astaire would make a movie with that title.
“Easter Parade” became one of the most financially profitable movies either had made to that point.
This was in 1947. America was just coming out of a war, and were ready to stroll down Fifth Avenue, or the main street of every small town in the country.
The weeks leading up to Easter in my family were something to behold. My mother and her sisters would spend hours in the shops on Broad Street, but that wasn’t enough. We were bound for Atlanta. We had to spend the day in Rich’s or Davison’s. There was always the S&S Café down the street to eat, and the Pink Pig at Rich’s.
I begged for penny loafers, scared to death she was going to put me in saddle oxfords. She used that to make me behave.
Before Easter Sunday arrived, they had outfitted everybody. Usually I just got a new dress shirt and pants, along with a pair of shoes at least a half size too big, in hopes I could wear them when school started, or at least have them for Sunday best.
One year, my cousin Joe and I got new white sport coats. Church was something else. Everyone was dressed to the “nines.” Girls my age were all decked out in clothes that I remember being frilly, even the socks they wore with new black patent leather shoes.
One Facebook friend in West Rome said all the girls on her street even got frilly panties. They would line up and on the count of three up went the dresses so the older ladies could snap Kodak pictures of them all.
I remember my mother making Dad drive her to Rome so she could see all the finery on parade from the downtown churches.
I remember thinking that I’d never seen so many hats. Every female in the world had a new hat, big ones, little ones, and all manners of frilly and flowered. But it wasn’t over. After church services, we gathered at my grandmother’s house for a feast that equaled Christmas dinner in every way. Then we had a big Easter egg hunt. It was a special weekend. Oh, the parade has lost its meaning in New York now. My family is celebrating Easter with the Master in glory, or a lot of them are.
But isn’t it fun to remember how it was? No one can take that away. I think we were lucky to have lived in those times. I wish I could revisit, don’t you! MIKE RAGLAND