Thomas Garcia: Easter eggs can be a source of joy in many ways

Staff Columnist

Well Easter has come and gone and while I’ll leave the religious side of this holiday to the religion columnist, I’ll talk about a question that I have been wondering about for some years now: Which is better the boiled/dyed egg or the plastic egg?

I’m sure that this past Sunday, countless area families engaged in a traditional Easter egg hunt, either community-run, family-run or both.

In those egg hunts, which eggs won out in popularity, the traditional dyed egg that the kids get to make with their families or the plastic egg filled with the chocolate and assorted candy goodies?

As a child I enjoyed the Easter egg hunt because in Nara Visa we would have the family hunt then the big hunt where we would get to find eggs that were made by other people and some that were filled with candy and sometimes money.

After all the hunting was done I would return home to look at my haul and was pleased at both the regular eggs and plastic ones.

I would eat my eggs just fine, though as the next week passed, my sister was not so keen on eating the eggs after two or three days.

By Friday, I would open the refrigerator and on the top self there would be a bowl of the Easter eggs that my sister had long forgotten.

Mom was quick to make use of these eggs in some tuna salad and my dad would chop them up and throw them in a salad.

My sister would sit by my mom with crackers and dip into the tuna salad she had in a bowl, and I’d be sitting on the couch with my bowl of salad just like my dad.

Guess those eggs brought us closer in more ways than I thought.

Fast forward to today. Most Easter egg hunt use the plastic eggs.

I can understand that the plastic egg saves time and is way easier to prepare and clean up than the dyed egg.

In fact, I have even seen pre-dyed Easter eggs for sale this year, and that really threw me for a loop.

Decorating eggs with you family is probably one of the funnest parts of Easter.

You get some eggs, you boil them, you get the cups, the dye and that little spoon that could scoop up water. You’ve got to remember that spoon.

It took a master’s level of skill to balance the egg on the spoon for the first dunk, let alone the expertise required to spin the egg to apply two types of dye to it.

I was eight when I saw my first multi-colored egg and I thought “one day I too will master the dying technique.”

Some of my best memories come from sitting around the kitchen table with my family dyeing those eggs. We would be busy creating art as our elders looked on and talked about family and their childhood memories of Easter.

That’s what I liked to most the family being together and having fun.

Sure, as a child the brightly colored Easter basket with toys and candies was the great thing but as I got older what I enjoyed about Easter did, too.

Even though it has been over two decades since I hunted Easter eggs, I’d have to say that I’d prefer to go after those dyed eggs rather than the plastic ones.

After all, it’s been a long time since my dad and I had a salad, and its been to long since my mom and sister shared the tuna salad.

Hope you all had a good Easter.

Thomas Garcia is a senior writer at the Quay County Sun. He can be reached at [email protected]