Easter Celebration - Part I

     The Easter Celebration began six weeks before Easter.  First there was Fat Tuesday.  This was the day before Ash Wednesday.  All sweets, delicacies, fat, etc. were to be purged from the house, so that the fasting could begin .  My paternal grandmother had her own calendar.  Because without fail, she made Punchki on Ash Wednesday.  They were a home made, jelly filled donuts.  Because they were fried and had jelly on the inside and sugar on the outside, they should have been made on Fat Tuesday.
     As a child Lent wasn't so bothersome.  I usually gave something up like candy or cookies.  I couldn't eat meat on Wednesdays and Fridays, but neither could my friends.  However, as a teenager, it was a horrible time for me!  I am a dancer.  I took tap & ballet lessons from the time I was not quite four years old until I was a teenager I had three different teachers.  Then when I was doing my student teaching, I went to the Pittsburgh Playhouse for adult lessons in Modern Jazz!  So, it was natural that I began going to the local "Teen" dances when I was in Junior High.  At first I went to the Lower Burrell Fire Hall on Saturday nights.  Then the crowd shifted to St. Joseph's Lyceum.  For a few months everyone went to the dances at the local YMCA in New Kensington, then back to the Lyceum.  By the time I was in High School I went to three teen dances every weekend: Friday night was at Henry's in a small building on the Tarentum end of the Tarentum Bridge;  Saturdays, dances were held in the Tarena Roller Rink in Tarentum; and Sunday nights they were at Birdville Firehall in Natrona Heights.  During the summer months when school was out, the Tarena also had dances on Wednesday nights.  So when I was told I wasn't allowed to go to dances during Lent, I was devastated!
     Having missed the religious aspect of fasting and praying, I was very sullen and couldn't wait until Lent was over!  The worst week of all was during Holy Week, the last week of Lent that portrayed the Passion of Christ, culminating with Good Friday, then the Glorius Resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday, or Resurrection Day as I like to call it!  In our house, there was a mandate by my parents for NO Television, NO radio, NO record player, NO dancing, NO singing, NOTHING!!  On Good Friday we were to go to the three hour service, between twelve noon and three pm when Jesus was hanging on the cross.  They had many sermons and the Stations of the Cross, dreary hymns, and a lot of incense!
     One Good Friday my cousins and I found out that the three hour service in the church was soooooo much better than what we had to do if we stayed home!  My family always met together, definitely over the weekend, especially Sunday after church.  We had many children about the same age.  We were very close.  then there was a gap and another age group of cousins.  We met at "The Hotel"  my paternal family's business was a hotel, motel and bar with a dining room where weddings, banquets, etc. were held.  We thought we were going to get away without going to church, but we didn't.  My Aunt Ruth, along with my uncle and their four children, lived in a house perched on the edge of a big long hill called Hill Street, but the foundation of their house was resting on the ground where the gravel parking lot for the hotel ended.  So, since everyone was busy that Good Friday, all of the children present that day at the Hotel had to go up to Aunt Ruth's house, kneel on the floor some in the doorway between the dining room and hall and across that hall from the kitchen where Aunt Ruth was baking!  We had to kneel and pray the rosary over and over again.  When some of us began to slack and whisper, Aunt Ruth would yell that we weren't all praying!  Once some of us got the giggles that spread though our group like a wildfire.  Aunt Ruth was even more upset!  She reminded us that we had it much more easier than the old time sinners who had to kneel on uncooked rice on the stairs of the church and pray the rosary as a penance!

So, we found out that the three hour long mass was much more pleasant, even though we kept repeating, "We adore thee O, Christ, and we bless Thee because by Thy Holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.  At least at mass, we stood, we knelt on padded kneelers, we sang, we prayed