Easter Baskets

The Saturday before Easter Ilona and her mom invited us over to her house to assemble a traditional Polish Easter Basket.  It was really cool to see where the Easter Basket Tradition came from opposed to how we have Easter Baskets today in the USA. 

First we added the Lamb (cake) representing Jesus Christ.  Then we added eggs, decorated eggs in Polish are called Pisanki, to symbolize life.  We also added bread for the Eucharist, and ham to represent prosperity.  Salt to represent purification, butter for the good will of Christ and horseradish to represent Christ’s passion still in our minds and the sacrifice he made for us.  We also added some Polish sausage, some fruit, a chocolate bunny, some chocolate eggs and chocolate chickens.  Finally we decorated the basked with greenery and placed a special clothe on top.

Then along with LOTS of other people we headed off to one of many Church services to get our Easter Basket blessed.  Ilona’s church was very full all of the pews were full and the isles were full of people standing.  The Priest talked to the children and asked them what the different parts of their basket represented and then he sprinkled everyone’s basket with holy water. 

Then on Easter morning all of the contents of the basket get eaten for breakfast.  It was probably the coolest thing we have experienced in Poland so far and so much more meaningful then our Easter Baskets at home.   A big thank you to Ilona and her mom for teaching us about this Easter Tradition!!!