I posted this year’s butter lamb in comments yesterday and on Twitter, but here it is again:
Butter lamb genesis here and tutorial here.
Can’t say I’m 100% pleased with this year’s edition. It’s a bit too poodle-like. But I am confident it will be hacked to bits and slathered onto hot cross buns and other breads at an Easter dinner I am not attending later on today. (For the time being, we’re continuing our new pandemic tradition of dining in separate bubbles. But the butter lambs, like The Show, must go on!)
Day of the Undead
I’m not a Christian except in the cultural sense of having been raised by Christians. My mom was a Christian and used to celebrate Easter by going to a sunrise service. When I was a cheeky atheist teen, I’d mock that by saying at least the sun could be counted upon to rise. (Yep, I was a sarcastic asshole. Still am!)
Anyhoo, as the years pass and my elders die off, I’m no less irreligious but becoming more sentimental, and I’ve converted Easter into a personal version of a holiday akin to Mexico’s Day of the Dead. I privately call my holiday the Day of the Undead. That name has probably already been coopted by zombie enthusiasts, but that’s okay since it’s a personal holiday. In my version, I go to a nearby cemetery that contains generations of family members, tidy up their graves and leave flowers.
I’ll remember the relatives I knew and pause at gravesites to wonder what the ancestors who passed through this world before I arrived were like. Day of the Undead is not a sad occasion. Much of what I remember is amusing and/or instructive of the larger human condition in some way. It’s a recognition that even after they’re gone, the dead live on in us when we think of them.
Today, I was thinking about my grandmother on my dad’s side, a fierce woman known as Granny to her five grandchildren. She seemed to despise all men except her husband and son and my two boy cousins. And she accepted the blood-relative males into her good graces only provisionally and would contemptuously mock any macho conceits.
It would probably be fair to call her a man-hater, but I don’t think she was a lesbian. She wasn’t especially fond of women who weren’t in her bloodline either. She just didn’t much like or trust people in general, but particularly men. She was fed up with macho bullshit, which I find relatable.
Granny never shared much of her pre-marriage history, but I got the impression it was mostly traumatic. She grew up on a farm in central Georgia during the Great Depression. She met my grandfather, whom we called Papa, during WW II in Savannah. He was a soldier from Florida who had joined the army before the war broke out, so after Pearl Harbor, he trained new recruits stateside to send overseas. She fled the Georgia farm during the war for a factory job.
As my sentimental Papa later told me, they met on the landing of a stairwell in a Savannah rooming house when she was charging up the stairs with a pile of boxes and ran smack into him. She said, “Oh, HELL!” and scooped up the boxes and turned to run away. Papa, immediately smitten as he told me later by Granny’s piercing blue-green eyes, said, “Don’t run away, beautiful!” And she didn’t. They were married within weeks.
Papa shipped out to the war in Europe eventually and participated in the D-Day landing and later in the Battle of the Bulge. He survived it all without a scratch, came home and stayed in the military as a career. He and Granny had two children.
I am their son’s eldest daughter, and I was the first grandchild on either side of the family, so I got lots of grandparental attention. If you were Granny’s younger female relative, you’d have her ferocious, watchful protection, whether you wanted it or not. (And you’d keep right on having it, even when you had grown children of your own.)
Granny was the rare adult who gave children her undivided attention. She also didn’t patronize us with baby talk. She treated us as miniature, naïve adults who desperately needed schooling in the harsh ways of the world, for their own good.
Papa was as sweet and mild-mannered as his wife was mercurial and fierce. He taught me to drive, first on a tractor and then a car as soon as I was tall enough to see over the steering wheel. Granny’s contribution was to teach me to hold the keys in my fist when exiting the car, with the blades protruding through my fingers to form a sort of Wolverine claw to repel attackers.
I loved them both very much and still do. They are in this world yet by the effect they have on their descendants. For example, I was a wife for more than a decade before it occurred to me that I married a man strikingly similar in character and habits to Papa: strong and capable, brave and kind.
And I still struggle to resist the impulse to imprint my distrustful, paranoid view of the world on the people in my life.
Happy Easter and a contemplative Day of the Undead to all who celebrate!
Baud
Cool family history.
So that explains how you manage us so well.
OzarkHillbilly
Granny sounds like a wonderful woman. To watch from the far side of the parking lot. Thanx for the story Betty.
Baud
Also too, this year’s butter lamb seems more like a butter llama. Still cute.
debbie
This lamb seems more alert than previous lambs. Love it!
Another Scott
Beautiful piece. Thank you.
Easter is my autistic brother’s favorite holiday, and has been for a very long time. For him, it’s related to Easterseals. He raises money for them and is a great ambassador for them in his town.
Happy holidays, everyone.
Cheers,
Scott.
oldgold
Here is an interesting history of the Easter Lamb Cake.
https://wpdh.com/i-found-out-our-easter-lamb-cake-has-a-dark-sinister-secret/
zhena gogolia
Very nice lamb!
Sad Easter for us, as we are completely cut off from our church. At least the last two Easters, we got together on Zoom. But now they’re “masking and distancing optional” with congregational singing, so we haven’t been there since October, and nobody seems to give a shit we’re not there except an occasional random parishioner. Our minister dumped the church in the early stages of the pandemic, and we’ve had an interim minister since then who lives far away and doesn’t really seem to care much. I’d move to another church if I thought they were taking the pandemic any more seriously, but I doubt it.
debbie
Yes! ❤️
Jim, Foolish Literalist
so it’s not just me….
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
Well, we’re glad you’re here!
Elizabelle
Wonderful essay. I prefer your version of this holiday; borrowing from here out.
stinger
What a wonderful essay. And lamb.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
I’m sorry to hear this. Community is important, and to be cut off from community hurts. And it’s worse when the circumstances are so stupid. Condolences.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Some seasonal celebrations for you jackals.
1. The Sacred Tradition called the Washington Post Peeps Diorama Contest. It used to be called the “Peeps Show” but I guess some sourpuss squelched that.
2. For Passover, some traditional singing of the song called Dayenu (a group called the Maccabeats). Hey, Barbershop and Heavy Metal are somebody’s tradition, right?
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
@Steeplejack: Thanks. My husband always says BJ is my church, but I guess that’s doubly true now.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
What a lovely evocation of your grandparents. And I love your version of the holiday.
Ohio Mom
@zhena gogolia: Before Covid I was about to (once again) go synagogue shopping. I had a particular congregation in mind to try out first. But always in my mind is the conditional nature of belonging to a congregation. They are your community until they aren’t — can you tell I’ve been through this before?
Maybe when a new minister arrives, you’ll be called to start attending again. There’s a reason the story of the prodigal son was included by the editors.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@zhena gogolia: Yeah, we’re experiencing some of that too. Fortunately the churches we like to drop in on are still hybrid, in person with a Zoom or Facebook feed. But there’s more and more talk about going in-person, and some events are in-person only.
Right now we’re watching the Washington National Cathedral (yes, I’m internetting while “attending” church). Absolutely full seats. I haven’t noticed if the congregation is masked. People on the altar are half and half.
Priest just announced that for communion they won’t be dipping bread in the cup, but will be doing the communal sipping from the same cup. (Many churches offer people the option of “sipping” or “dipping” at communion). Is that somebody’s idea of the healthiest approach?
frosty
Beautiful story, thanks for sharing it. And the butter lamb too!
Bex
@zhena gogolia: Try this: https://youtu.be.com/channel/UCzNgnFyixuhKLTyOH-sTVHQ
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
If you ever need an indulgence, I know a guy.
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I am sad for you about your church.
Hungry Joe
This year I once again enjoyed not going to a Seder. My brain got Seder-fried a few decades back, when I was invited to a friend’s family Seder and it lasted FOUR HOURS: two hours before dinner, half-hour dinner, hour and a half after dinner. Every passage, every song was parsed, argued over. It was endless. I started to feel as if part of me would always be there, trapped in Jewish/Passover Limbo. AND the brisket was overdone.
I was raised in watered-down ‘50s and ‘60s Reform Judaism; my father’s editing pared the Seder down to 15 minutes before dinner and ten minutes after. (It helped than none of us could carry a tune, or even drag one — or even wanted to.) So that four-hour Seder finished me off. Now I just buy a box of matzo and some gefilte fish & horseradish, and call it good. And it IS good.
debbie
@zhena gogolia:
Some cute for you today.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Artists are never good judges of their own work. He’s adorable.
Baud
For me, one of the nice things about not being religious is that I don’t have an obligation to deal with a “community.” But that’s just me. A part of me is jealous of people who are able to put up with others with aplomb.
Kathleen
Love your lamb and your story.
John Cole
that lamb is winking at me
Ceci n est pas mon nym
We’re loosely connected with a number of communities, including the Quakers. The Quakers have 300 years of figuring out how to get along and get things done without leadership, and supposedly well-established mechanisms for resolving conflict.
I wouldn’t describe the result as “aplomb”. People are ornery. Even Quakers. Especially Quakers.
I remember noticing that some of the 2000-year-old letters of Paul to the various communities were basically trying to settle intra-church feuds from afar.
Baud
@John Cole:
A Ralph Wiggum reference?
zhena gogolia
@Ohio Mom: Yes, I think that might happen.
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Oh, man, sipping from the communal cup sounds insane!
zhena gogolia
@debbie: So cute!
zhena gogolia
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Quakers can get really vicious.
Wanderer
A lovely butter lamb with stars in it’s eyes. Very adorable.
Cameron
Are you going to be doing another butter email for the Washington Correspondents’ Dinner?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@zhena gogolia: Nixon was a Quaker
Baud
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
I have so little patience. Maybe I wouldn’t have made a good Quaker.
Yarrow
@Baud: That was my thought too. A butter llama. So cute.
@zhena gogolia: Sorry to hear things have gone this way. Have they flatly refused to continue to broadcast the services? Seems seriously non-inclusive. They must have parishioners who can’t attend or don’t feel safe attending in person yet. Maybe they haven’t heard from the right/enough people.
zhena gogolia
@Yarrow: They sporadically provide a link to an audio recording of last week’s service. I don’t find this very satisfactory. I know there are people who are in the same position as we are, but I just think there isn’t enough interest or will to try to help us out.
This week I kept getting group e-mails asking us to provide food for after the service, and I wrote to the person to explain my situation, but got no answer.
ETA: Probably if we had a permanent minister, they’d pay some attention. But we don’t. The UCC has this ridiculous system where you have to wait 1-2 years to get a new minister. We’re well into the second year now, and I don’t see any movement on this front.
Yarrow
@zhena gogolia: Since email isn’t working maybe try calling and talking to someone? If anyone is there during the week maybe show up and ask to chat outside.
It seems that sometimes in organizations it takes someone (or several someones) to organize something for it to happen. Maybe the person who did the Zooms left or isn’t available to do them so they just stopped. There has to be someone who would be willing to do them. It could be considered “outreach” to older and vulnerable parishioners and others. Churches seem to love outreach.
WaterGirl
I love your version of Easter. I love your story. thanks for sharing it with us.
Ruckus ??
Yep, I was a sarcastic asshole. Still am!
All the best are! Hard to go through life without sarcasm – you can’t make fun of stuff without that. And not making fun of stuff is what shortens your life. Because without sarcasm you’d have to take everything serious. And let’s face it, too serious just makes life far less fun. We get a way too short time here, some far too short and some not quite so much. As I’m over 1/4 of the way through my eighth decade and have seen far too much that couldn’t be laughed at in all those decades, I have reached the conclusion that funny is the key. How can one enjoy life without laughter? Sure there are parts that can’t be laughed about, which is why you need as much laughter as possible, to make up for the stuff that isn’t funny. I can give way too many examples of not even close to funny. We all can. Funny is better than the reality. Funny makes the reality palatable.
NotMax
Passover obligatory.
:)
NotMax
@Ruckus
Funny makes the world go ’round.
(“Cabaret” was this close to getting it correct.)
RandomMonster
Beautiful writing, Betty. Wonderful that you live close enough to family resting places that you can make a tradition of visiting them.
germy
@debbie:
germy
shudder
Ohio Mom
@Hungry Joe: Please reframe: we are American Jews, and we are very good at being American Jews. A short, sweet seder is an expression of our contemporary Judaism and praiseworthy. The meaning of any ritual is where you find it (the original post being example number one).
Also, you are a more patient person than I am. I would have left a four hour seder long before it was over. Maybe even before the meal. Too much self-importance for me to tolerate.
StringOnAStick
It’s so good to make a new tradition when the standard ones encouraged by, well, tradition just don’t provide the emotional link you are looking for. I love your story Betty, so hopeful and humane. What a perfect way to make remembrance positive and personal, not institutional.
NotMax
@Hungry Joe
Unquestionably falls squarely under the heading of Original Sin.
;)
debbie
@germy:
Yikes!
debbie
Uncle Cosmo
Nixon was the sort of Quaker who cheats at penny-ante poker.
trollhattan
Race to the bottom between Texas and Florida, tilts east.
Math. “Prohibited topics” in math. TBF it would have helped me at the time had they prohibited calculus. Word problems?
Q: “Harley has five guns. His grandmother gives him two guns for his birthday. The next week the police seize three guns from Harley, how many guns does Harley have?”
A: “Harley has eight guns: five from his original collection, two given to him by his grandmother, and one from the policeman that he confiscated after conducting a citizen’s arrest of that woke traitor cop.”
scav
@trollhattan: For Extra Credit: How much more Free is Harley than the communists living in the hellhold East Coast?
NotMax
@trollhattan
“We have a problem with all those signs symbolizing equality. Get rid of them and then we’ll talk.”
//
SteveinPHX
Many thanks BC. Happy Easter! I had a grandma who ran a boarding house in DeLand back in the ’30s and 40’s. She was a single mom to an only son (my OM). The husband had fled back to England for reasons obscured by murky family history long before. Pretty independent old gal as I remember.
zhena gogolia
@Ohio Mom: I have been to both kinds, and the shorter ones are better!
Jay
@trollhattan:
can’t have anything with an = sign, can they,…..
trollhattan
@zhena gogolia:
My first Catholic wedding I thought “Hey, it’s about over” once the ceremony was complete and the lucky couple was officially hitched. Then mass started, and that church was packed.
Trapped, I tell you, trapped!
Salty Sam
I love your Granny…
ian
@trollhattan:
They are mostly prohibited because of common core, which many teachers have a problem with, and for completely unrelated reasons right wing nuts also have problems with. The answer that Florida went with was to throw out common core and replace it with best. In case your wondering- best (Benchmarks for Excellent Student Thinking) is not the best education standard. Since most textbooks use the commonly held national standard of common core, most textbooks will be rejected by Florida’s standards.
edited for grammar mistakes
scav
Speaking of Easter, most Christians have ditched a shitload of fasting, not only the 40 days before Eggfest, but also same before Treemas and all then the meatless and sexless days every single week of the year.
Mike S (Now with a Democratic Congressperson!)
It looks more Butter Llama than Butter Poodle to me. But still done with more a lot more skill than I could bring to dairy sculpture, that’s for sure.
Renie
Thanks Betty for posting that little bit of your family history. Enjoyed the story; love to read about family histories.
Lyrebird
@Hungry Joe: You’ve seen the 2-minute seder?
With little kids and a big-tent family, that Maccabeats video that
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: mentioned is our most consistent tradition.
trollhattan
@Lyrebird: From Tom Sullivan at Digby’s place.
Lyrebird
@trollhattan: Thanks, that’s great! And luckily for us, we’ve got none of that Orangemandias noise in our house at least.
My youngest refuses to ask scripted questions, but he wants to know if anyone died crossing the sea, if anyone died in the desert, etc.
oldster
Thanks, Betty! A beautiful evocation of your ancestors, and an act of reverence towards them.
As long as men are still on their bullshit, there’s a lot not to like or trust. Not liking or trusting men is not being a man-hater, much less a lesbian, it’s just exercising proper self-care and self-respect.
Some women find one man they can trust; sounds like your granny found him. My universally misanthropic wife — often mistaken for a lesbian when she was younger — has found me generally trustworthy. It has not changed her opinion of the modal male. I respect that.
Raven
The “turkey melon” sort of egg.
NotMax
@trollhattan
#10A: All the yarmulkes are red and have MAGA embroidered across them.
Martin
Haven’t been to a Seder in a few years (2 years before covid?) Looking forward to getting another invite soon. This atheist doesn’t feel compelled to attend the various religious ceremonies on a regular basis, but I do enjoy being an occasional guest at other people’s celebrations. I find religion to be fascinating, even if I’m not a believer.
This year’s easter is our normative barbecue. Somehow easter ham turned into easter pork ribs, brats, and the like, and damn if it’s not a good excuse to kick off barbecue season.
Raven
@Hungry Joe: My first seder was in Vietnam!
NotMax
@Raven
Phosher meal?
;)
Raven
@NotMax: I actually found an article that includes what must have been the one I went to.
A Seder Under Fire
Martin
Your granny sounds a lot like my grandmother Maria. Everyone called her Maria, including me at a young age. She didn’t like titles. She too had a traumatic upbringing and she too treated her kids and grandkids as little adults, something I’ve tried to repeat with my kids.
She wasn’t distrusting of others though. She loved meeting new people, and would invite all the exchange students to her house for holidays like easter, when the exchange students didn’t really have anyplace else to go. She didn’t care where you were from, what you believed, how you identified, etc. She was a recovering Catholic and truly believed that everyone was equal in God’s eyes.
debbie
delk
At Easter, my mother would have a little section of un-blessed food for my Jewish husband. I think she thought that food blessed in a church would give him explosive diarrhea or projectile vomit.
Nutmeg again
Your lamb is lovely! Much nicer than the ones they sell in the grocery stores around here (a cultural nuance very new to me.)
My general take on the holiday is summed up in a card I saw: “I hope you have a better Good Friday than Jesus did!”
And likewise all around. Happy Chocolate Bunny day
JPL
@scav: Math preaches equality. All you have to do is search the word equal in order to see. The fact that they didn’t like Pablo and Peter holding hands while calculating how fast the train went, is secondary.
JPL
@Raven: It came out great!
Ohio Mom
@zhena gogolia: Passover is a happy holiday and a Seder is supposed to be enjoyable — the first clue is that instruction to drink four glasses of wine. If your guests are looking at their watches because you are droning on, you are doing it wrong.
zhena gogolia
@Ohio Mom: I loved the one where my (non-religious) ex-husband and his sister had to do all the prayers because their religious cousins were trying to do it really right but couldn’t handle the Hebrew.
Raven
@JPL: People liked it, those who came! We had a rash of injuries and covid fear so it was only about eight people but that was fine.
Dan B
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Reminds me of Lambchop.*
*Which might dovetail closely with the Lamb Cake origin story. Too closely?
scav
@JPL: Geometry teaches about transformations, so it also also should be banned out of any gender-rigid program of instruction — and let’s not even contemplate the moral morass of knot theory. Although actually, all of this should be academic, because people who self-avowedly don’t see color shouldn’t be able to read any of the text in the books in the first place.
something fabulous
@Baud: Yes! Adorable butter llama! (Llamas are my favorite!) Thanks for the story, Betty– I love family stories. Happy day of the undead and sweet Llamas to all!
JPL
@scav: ha! Yesterday there was an article about the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and how soon they will ban that.
Dan B
@trollhattan: Catholic dogma: suffering is good for the soul.
Was taken to a Catholic wedding as a nine year old. It felt like the midwife would arrive before it was over.
Nelle
@zhena gogolia: This reminds me of the freshman English class that I was teaching. Among others were four Saudis and about six fierce evangelicals (American). When we would come across biblical allusions, those Americans never caught them while the Saudi women patiently explained the allusions.
Another Scott
An excellent reply to Jacob Rees-Mogg:
(via gavmacn)
Cheers,
Scott.
something fabulous
@trollhattan: Brilliant! thanks for sharing! Off to annoy some people with it!
Geminid
@Dan B: My late friend Chris grew up in a Black church. His father was the preacher, and the services were spirited. Once, a high school classmate invited Chris to a Methodist service and it was very different. After a half hour, Chris said, he was wondering when they were going to bring the casket in.
HeartlandLiberal
When I was a kid in the 1950’s, we always each spring before Easter went up “to the country”, to the community cemetery where at least eight generations of my family name are buried, going back to the ones who came over from North Carolina in the early 1800s. Their graves are among the oldest, with two tall, slim, sandstone pillars for tombstones. Plaques identifying them were put on decades ago by some historian who researched the cemetery. All the aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered, as well as those from other families. We cleaned the graves, made sure there were fresh flowers. And at lunch, we all gathered around a long cement table outside the church nearby, where all the women folk had laid out the food they had prepared for us. I especially remember there was banana pudding, which was to die for. This was in rural Alabama, so there was no end to fried chicken, breaded fried okra, and field peas, and green beans cooked with ham hocks. I spoke to my only surviving aunt a couple weeks ago, who is 96. My cousin put our phone number in her phone, so she would see who is calling and answer it. It was so good to talk to her, she was my father’s sister, and he left the building way to early, in 1982. She still lives in the retirement home she and my uncle had built, on the 40 acres that the family had held onto despite moving away and living in the city for their working lives. Her son lives in a house he and wife built on the back of the property, so he is there to check in on her. She was the best cook in the family, even better than my mother. Forgive me, mom, but it is the truth.
VeniceRiley
That butter lamb has serious Wallace and Gromit vibes.
zhena gogolia
@Nelle: Knowledge of the Bible is extinct among American youth.
Dan B
@Geminid: Very apt observation!
Tehanu
Lovely essay, Betty, and I’m sure your grandmother would applaud it. Thanks.
HeartlandLiberal
@Geminid: Anyone who is white and has ever been to a Black church service would ask the exact same question. Growing up, I spent two weeks every summer with an aunt in a small rural Alabama town. Her husband was a Baptist minister. One guess when I hit the teens I became an agnostic.
oldster
@Geminid:
I’ve sung in gospel choirs in a number of AME churches. They know how to make a joyful noise.
Geoduck
My version of a joke I read years ago in Reader’s Digest or somesuch:
A traveling comedy troop gets an invitation to do their act at a small church in the Scottish highlands. It’s not their normal beat, but a gig’s a gig, so they trek out to the church. The troop is introduced to the congregation, and receive a round of polite applause. They launch into their act, and it proves to be one of those days where they nail it, the gags go flawlessly, everyone’s timing is perfect. And from their audience.. nothing. Stony, dead silence. The troop’s obviously knocked back by this, but The Show Must Go On, so they rally and plow through the rest of their performance. Still nothing. Finally, defeated, they wrap it up and take their bows and to their bafflement, the entire congregation immediately hops to its feet and launches into sustained, vigorous applause. The man who introduced them bustles back onto the stage and starts enthusiastically pumping the troop leader’s hand: “Och, man! That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen! I think I may have ruptured meself keeping from laughing in church!”
Geminid
@oldster: Chris’s family were Church of God in Christ. They are on the Pentecostal side, I think. Chris had a strong faith but he was never into the church like his parents were and his sisters are.
Chris told me that when he was little his parents left him and his sisters home on Sunday mornings while they went to services. The kids would put on Motown records and dance.
I had a nice surprise while Sunday driving this morning. I’d noticed a pretty church about five miles from my house but I had never gone by on a Sunday morning. I happened to cruise by today when services had just ended, and it turns out that the Mount Zion Baptist Church has a Black congregation.
something fabulous
@something fabulous: —and, I shared it with my brother on messenger, so he could *also* annoy people, and he wrote back “check your what’s app”– he had just sent it to me!!!
Geminid
@oldster: I guess those African Methodist Episcopal folk make up in enthusiasm for their white counterparts my friend fellowshipped with that Sunday. Chris found them somewhat restrained.
CapnMubbers
Hah! Betty Cracker’s 2019 butter lamb tutorial is not too far down on google’s images page!