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Frumpy Mom: Happy Easter, Passover or your choice of holiday

April 1, 2026

If you’re reading this in Sunday’s newspaper, then Happy Easter or Passover, whichever you celebrate. Or, if you’re still celebrating the vernal equinox, also known as the first day of spring, happy that.

Easter and Passover don’t always occur simultaneously, but this year they do. Since I’m old as dirt, Easter to me always brings back childhood memories of the days when I got a new Easter bonnet to wear to church, Mom put on her hat and best dress and would let me play with her gloves in church.

Looking at the Easter lilies on the altar would distract me from the excruciatingly boring church service for a nanosecond or two, but after that, the time flew by like half-dried concrete.

Lilies are a common sight at Easter time but are particularly poisonous for cats, whether they chew on a petal or brush against pollen that they accidentally ingest while cleaning themselves. (Adobe Stock)

The only book my parents allowed me to read during those agonizing, dull church services was the Bible, and I read it so many times that I could always answer all the Bible clues on Jeopardy!, even the hard ones.

Then, afterward, there were Easter baskets, coloring eggs and egg hunts, although none of them stick in my memory today. When my kids hit the teenage years, they refused to dye eggs and barely noticed the Easter baskets I continued to buy them, so I stopped making the effort.

Yes, you guessed it. The following year, they keened like the world’s most pathetic banshees when they realized they weren’t getting Easter baskets. I tried hard not to feel guilty. Honestly, this parenting thing is nothing but a crapshoot.

Nowadays, Easter generally passes with little ceremony around my house. My kids don’t go to church anymore, nor do they believe the Easter story. My son doesn’t like ham, but sometimes I’ll buy one on sale, slice it up and freeze the slices for sandwiches later. I guess that’s the only tradition I have left. Eating ham sandwiches. That’s a little sad, but hey at least there’s chocolate bunnies. Yum. And they go on sale the day after Easter. So you know where I’ll be on Monday.

Do you have any special memories of Easter? Or Passover? Or anything else? I’m easy.

One year when the kids were small, I remember being in a tiny Italian town called Sestri Levante. We were doing a home exchange, so I’d had the chance to stay in this great apartment near the beach for free. Trust me, it’s the only way I’ll ever be able to again stay on the Italian Riviera, where a single slice of pizza costs as much as my car. OK, that’s a lie. It cost more than my car. But being able to go to the grocery store and cook in our apartment saved a fortune.

Curly Girl staring down a statue on the Fisher family vacation to Italy, which included free lodging thanks to a home exchange. This was in the tiny beach town of Sestri Levante on the Italian Riviera. Photo by Marla Jo Fisher, the Frumpy Middle-age Mom

On Easter Sunday near the end of the trip, I was getting tired and got up late. The kids were antsy, so while I was cooking breakfast, I told them to watch TV. What was on? “The Wizard of Oz.” In Italian, where it’s called “Il mago di Oz.” My children happily watched it.

Now I wonder how many years it’s been since that classic film ran here every Easter. I think “The Ten Commandments” came on afterward, with Charlton Heston as Moses and Yul Brynner as the bad guy, Egyptian pharaoh Ramses.

Nowadays, I couldn’t take Judy Garland and Charlton Heston in one sitting, but I still watch “Easter Parade” when I can find it. With Judy Garland, Peter Lawford and Fred Astaire. Some of you are ancient enough to remember that movie classic, which is still great, although I imagine today’s kids have no idea what an Easter bonnet is.

My other memory of Easter I’ve shared before, but I’ll share it again anyway. On my kids’ first Easter since I adopted them at ages 3 and 5, they experienced their first Easter Egg hunt at our church. After they got the “Go” signal, my son Cheetah Boy dashed around at the speed of light, grabbed up all the eggs and came back with a full basket, panting. “I did it!” he crowed.

I had to explain to him that he had to put most of the eggs back, so the other kids could have the fun of finding them. He wept bitterly when I explained this, and I agree it was unfair. Nobody told him it wasn’t a race. He was happy when he got home, though, and I’d hidden plastic eggs around the house filled with dollar bills. Occasionally, I’ll still come across one that we missed.

And I’ll finish up with an Easter joke I found on the Internet:

A man went on vacation to the Holy Land with his wife and mother-in-law. While they were in Israel, the mother-in-law died unexpectedly. The husband went to a local mortuary to talk about what he should do next.

“You have two main options,” the funeral director explained to him. “You can repatriate your mother-in-law’s remains to the United States for around $5,000. Or you can have her buried here in the Holy Land for $150.”

The man thought it over, and then told the mortician that he’d like to have his mother-in-law shipped back home.

The funeral director was surprised, and asked the man why he would choose the vastly more expensive option.

The man had a simple answer.

“A man died here and was buried some 2,000 years ago. Three days later, he rose from the dead. I can’t take that chance with my mother-in-law.”

Frumpy Mom: Happy Easter, Passover or your choice of holiday Orange County Register

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