David Murdock Column: On Easter memories, Charlton Heston, eggs, baskets and more

When I sat down to write this morning, I very nearly wrote the same column that I wrote for Easter last year!  Then, I looked back through my columns for Easter Sunday over the years, and, sometime or the other, I’ve written just about everything that came to mind today.

To sum them all up:  new Easter clothes, Easter eggs, Easter baskets, the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille epic movie "The Ten Commandments," and the same scripture references.

To go a little deeper:  I have vivid memories of Mom taking me to get new Easter clothes as a kid — usually a navy blue suit.  When we stopped buying new Easter suits, however, is something that I don’t recall.  It would have been somewhere in my early teens, but I simply don’t remember the exact date.

Nor do I really recall hunting Easter eggs, myself.  I remember my younger cousins hunting Easter eggs at the big family gathering we used to have on Easter, but I think that it’s such a young kids’ activity that the memory of it has faded for me.  For some reason, I do recall dyeing eggs though, and the strongest memory there is of those PAAS dye kits.  If there is another brand of Easter egg dye, I certainly couldn’t say what it is.

Easter baskets?  Not much memory of them, either.  All I remember about Easter baskets is that I got them; what was in them is a different matter entirely.  Of course, it must have been candy, with a “centerpiece” of a chocolate bunny — that was the norm back then.  My love of Cadbury Crème Eggs is an adult memory, though, not a childhood memory.

One thing about Easter baskets that has struck me recently is that more parents “make” custom Easter baskets for their kids instead of buying pre-packaged ones, which was the norm when I was young.  Last week, I thought the fact that we don’t do Easter baskets for adults.  I’m sort of surprised.

So, I Googled it, and — sure enough ― Easter baskets for adults are a thing!  I found all sorts of suggestions about what to put in custom ones;  most involve some sort of “gourmet” food items, by the way.  There are pre-packaged ones available for delivery, too, again mostly containing food items of some sort.

Getting into territory where I do have solid memories is the annual airing of the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille epic movie "The Ten Commandments," starring Charlton Heston, on ABC.  I  haven’t watched it in years — it’s a really long movie – but I looked forward to watching it with my family when I was a kid ― because it was a really long movie, and I got to stay up late to see it.  To this day, there’s just something about that movie for me.  It was only later in life that I began to understand the theological significance of it all, but I have wonderful memories of it as a “movie event” of my childhood.

Now, those scripture references — nearly every year, I wrote about Peter’s denial of Christ.  Why I am so fascinated by that narrative is abundantly clear to me.  I have never understood how Peter could have denied Christ.  But he did, and — despite how that last sentence sounds — I do not judge him for it.  Simply put, it flabbergasts me that Peter, a man who had witnessed the ministry of Jesus, could have denied him.

The point there is that I think it flabbergasted Peter, too —  until the end of his days.

From a distance, I can say that I don’t understand Peter.  Perhaps Peter didn’t understand Peter, either.  That would explain how “Peter declared, ‘Even if all fall away, I will not.’” (Mark 14:29 NIV) immediately before “Jesus answered, ‘today — yes, tonight — before the rooster crows twice you yourself will disown me three times’” (14:30).  Verse 31 records:  “But Peter insisted emphatically, ‘Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.’ And all the others said the same.”

Something jumps out at me in verse 31:  “And all the others said the same” [emphasis added].  I’m not sure that I ever noticed that part with such clarity before — all of these men had witnessed the Lord’s ministry … and they all, in effect, said that they would never deny Him.

Later, when Jesus is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, Mark 14:50 says, “Then everyone deserted him and fled.”  It wasn’t, in effect, only Peter who denied him.

Another thing that I have observed in print, over and over — not only here, but also in my journal — is that every year, I feel like I understand the Passion narrative in newer ways.  The fact that all the other disciples had also essentially “denied” or “disowned” the Lord had never occurred to me until this year, for example.

Imagine how terrified the disciples must have been.  I’ll say this for Peter, though ― he went with the Lord to the Sanhedrin, but “at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. There he sat with the guards and warmed himself at the fire” (Mark 14:54).  That is where his denial took place.

Happy Easter to all.

David Murdock is an English instructor at Gadsden State Community College. He can be contacted at murdockcolumn@yahoo.com. The opinions expressed are his own.   

This article originally appeared on The Gadsden Times: David Murdock on Easter memories of eggs and 'The Ten Commandments'