Basket full of blessings: Local churches continue Easter basket blessing tradition
On Saturday afternoon, dozens of parishioners holding elaborate baskets filled with sweet and savory goodies gathered inside St. Francis of Assisi Church in Finleyville for the traditional Easter basket blessing service.
“The blessing of Easter baskets goes back to at least the Middle Ages,” said the Rev. Robert “Fr. Bob” Miller, who serves at St. John the XXIII Parish, which includes St. Francis, St. Isaac Jogues Church in Jefferson Hills and St. Benedict the Abbot Church in McMurray. “Immigrants from Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, brought that tradition to this country.”
The tradition is rich in culture and symbolism.
Christians, especially Catholics, begin a 40-day period of fasting on Ash Wednesday, which culminates in joyful celebration on Easter Sunday. During the Lenten season many restrict or abstain from meat, oils and other foods, like chocolate or butter.
“What is in the basket and what is being blessed is supper, to be the first meal of Easter. From Good Friday until after the Easter vigil, Catholics are supposed to be fasting,” said Fr. Anthony Klimko, pastor at Roman Catholic Churches of Southern Fayette. “We’re breaking that fast and partaking in all of these wonderful foods.”
All the wonderful foods include Easter basket staples like butter, often shaped like a lamb, to symbolize the richness of salvation, and ham or other meats to represent the joy of Christ’s resurrection. Sausage links represent the chains of death broken by Jesus’s sacrifice and resurrection, colored eggs are reminders of hope and new life, and candles, which are commonly included in the baskets, remind those present that Christ is the light of the world.
Wine is often included in baskets, and horseradish is symbolic of the bitterness of the Passion of Christ.
“You can’t forget the Easter bread,” Klimko said. “The paska, like a sweetened yeast bread. It’s so delicious.”
Courtesy Bonnie BalasThis is Bonnie Balas’s first Easter without her mother, Kathryn, whom she always helped in putting together baskets for blessing. “My grandmother was deceased. Mom always said when she was making the bread, she’d say, ‘Put your hands in my hands,’ to help her,” Balas recalled, adding she would carry on that special tradition this year.
Paska, or pascha, depending on one’s ethnic spelling, bread is a work of art and labor of love; some women simply top the bread with a cross, while others braid their loaves or fashion them into circles decorated with a crown of thorns. That bread is often paired with Easter cheese, which symbolizes moderation, handmade from recipes passed down through generations.
“All the baskets are the same, but every basket is different,” said Mark Jesko, of Uniontown, who attended the basket blessing at St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Church Saturday. “It goes back generation after generation after generation.”
Courtesy Mark JeskoWhen Mark Jesko, of Uniontown, visited family in Slovakia, they couldn’t believe he still made pysanky eggs for inclusion in his Easter baskets. “Another custom is … of the scraps from the meal, the egg shells, bread scraps, they were all ground up and crushed and sprinkled around the house to protect the house,” Jesko said.
Jesko’s baskets have traditionally included pysanky, Ukrainian Easter eggs painstakingly written on in wax and dyed methodically to bring out colorful, intricate designs. Bonnie Balas, also a parishioner at St. John’s, included pysanky in her baskets, too, and lined her baskets in hand-embroidered cloths passed down through generations of Balas women (and some collected during her time in Eastern Europe, where Balas learned folk arts she’s brought home to Uniontown and shared with her parish).
“My mother was an exquisite embroiderer,” said Balas. “We have one that we did together. People want their family things to live on, their heritage.”
It’s a lot of work to craft eggs and cloths, to bake paska bread and cook the traditional Easter foods, but it’s worth it, Balas and others agreed.
“This is all done out of love: Love for Jesus, His resurrection, to thank Him for giving His life for us, and also love for family, which binds us all together,” Balas said. “These traditions have lived on.”
The tradition lived on at St. John’s and throughout the region. Parishioners from St. John the XXIII gathered at St. Francis in Finleyville Saturday for the 3 p.m. service; folks celebrated at all four of the St. James and St. Katharine Drexel partner parishes churches, and Margaret McCombs, of Carmichaels, attended the basket blessing at St. Ann in Waynesburg.
Courtesy Margaret McCombsEvery year since she can remember, Margaret McCombs has prepared an Easter basket for her church’s basket blessing service the day before Easter. Last year’s basket, per tradition, was filled with colored eggs, meats, chocolate and other sweet and savory foods, all of which are symbolic.
St. Ann is part of the St. Matthias Parish in Greene County.
“It just wouldn’t feel right, like Easter, if we didn’t do it,” said McCombs, whose earliest Easter memories include putting together a basket with her mother. “We’ve always taken this basket to church on the Saturday before Easter. We would come home and we would eat our blessed food. It’s just a family tradition.”