The finery of Easter past
Growing up in Spanish Harlem we had rituals few would ever violate. For one, we had to put on new finery for church on Easter Sundays. Wearing something already used was an embarrassment of the first order.
It wasn’t that one would be banned to the pits of hell for donning an old dress or a worn pair of pants. Nor would anyone ever say anything to your face. But you could count on “behind-the-back talk” for the rest of the week. For some not having new clothes was tantamount to committing a mortal sin — the worst transgression in the hierarchy of sins.
To what extent was this “Easter new finery conviction” ingrained in my thinking? So much so that to this day one memory still pops us when I think of Easter Sunday: new clothing. And the memory became the plot of a short story I once wrote, the co-winner of a New York University writing contest.
Titled “301 for Easter,” it’s about a father, Papa Jose, who is desperate because he can’t afford to buy new Easter clothing for his children. He has a dream about the number 301 and bets on it in a lotto-type of game from that time. Another number comes out. So, his children sneak into the earliest Mass that Sunday to avoid being teased for having nothing new to wear.
In writing today’s column about the importance of getting dressed up for past Easters, I gathered remembrances from 10 individuals. They included current colleagues, my high school prom date and others I still know from my Spanish Harlem days.
My last interview was with a 45-year-long rectory helper at St. Cecilia’s, my childhood church on 106th off Lexington Avenue in New York City. She and I had common memories. She also told me there were no egg hunts in her time. I, too, never recalled egg hunts. Why would I? There was nowhere to hide eggs in our tiny railroad apartments or on the tarred streets and concrete sidewalks on our walk to St. Cecilia’s.
Everyone I spoke with recalled as a child the importance of dressing up. Some attributed it to the solemnity of Easter. Others to tradition. Online I learned that the Roman emperor, Constantine, in 300 A.D. decreed that everyone in his court had to wear the finest new clothing on Easter.
There also seemed to be a common theme among a few of the 10 interviewees. I got a sense they believed dressing up on Easter was a way of masking one’s poverty. Two expressed the poverty sentiment poignantly.
“We were used to getting clothing from a secondhand store. Not on Easter Sundays. We always got something new for that day and walked to church with pride. It was the one day of the year we didn’t look poor,” said a friend from my old neighborhood who is now living in Florida.
The second one, a photographer who grew up in Bridgeport, said, “We were less than middle class in 1955. But my mother worked for a furrier and knew about clothing. And on Easter all the good clothes came out. Even people who were poor as dirt dressed up. It was more than religion. It was a social thing. It was a way of transcending who you were.”
Originally, I had considered driving to St. Cecilia’s on Easter Sunday. I wanted to see if parishioners were still dressing up. Because the rectory worker had told me that dress tradition was long gone, I decided to stay local and visited three Norwalk churches. I saw no bonnets. Most were casually dressed.
The Wednesday after Easter I spoke with one of my interviewees, a retired barber living in my town. On Easter Sunday he had made it a point of observing how people were dressed at our local church. “Mostly casual,” he told me.
Should I have been surprised about the new dress trend on Easter and generally? Probably not. I occasionally wear jeans with a sports jacket and no tie to functions where in the past a suit was a given.
Times have changed. But in thinking about the dress customs of my long-ago Easter Sundays and current norms, I wonder if in any way the new casual makes us better? I really don’t know.