Jane and Leah were just getting home from Easter Morning Eucharist at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church.
“Katherine Alyse says that today is the official start of White Shoe Season,” said Jane, “Methinks I should take part in this quaint custom that I may be a well-rounded Twentieth-Century Girl.”
“The hats are not bad either,” put in Leah.
Kelly Ann came into the dining room with several Easter baskets. “We have waited for you to get back before we started the egg hunt,” she said, “How was the service?”
“Splendiferous!” Jane was enthusiastic. “For a small-town parish, St. Annes’ certainly knows how to put on the dog for special occasions! Never had we anything like this when I was back home. Golly Ned! The music, the hymns, the stained glass, the statues, the gold candlesticks, and the vestments!”
“And enough incense to choke a horse,” added Leah.
“Sundays back home were so dull and boring,” Jane continued. “Glad am I to have been supratemporally transmigrated to a time after the Oxford Movement, and the Romanizing of the Anglican Church. It is like going to the theater now!”
“Well, hang up your hats and let’s start hunting,” said Kelly. “Nellie and Bailey were the Easter Bunny this year; let’s see how well they hid the eggs.”
Gila came in and Kelly said, “Come on, Gila, take a basket and join the hunt!”
Gila hesitated. “I do not know if in this Christian custom I should take part. That is for you girls.”
Kelly smiled. “But it is so much more than that, Gila. Colored eggs at this time of year are fertility symbols, sacred to the Anglo-Saxon goddess, Eostera, Goddess of the Spring.”
Gila frowned, “I think our rabbi back in Lialkadorf would say that is even worse!”
“There was a colored egg on the Seder Plate Thursday night,” Jane observed, “This seems to be a fairly common custom.”
“Besides,” informed Kelly, “some of the hidden eggs are chocolate.”
Gila did not have to think long. “Oh . . . In that case, I think that in the secular observance of this fairly universal Spring Festival I can take part. After all, what we did with Purim this is like.”
The hunt commenced!
