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Cathedral’s Holy Saturday Blessing of Easter Baskets meaningful to parishioners
YOUNGSTOWN
The Blessing of Easter Foods ceremony at St. Columba Cathedral on Holy Saturday was, for some, a beautiful relatively new experience, and for others, a comforting lifetime tradition.
“It just doesn’t feel like Easter if the food is not blessed,” said Agnes Krut of Campbell, 91, who said she has enjoyed the tradition since she was a little girl.
Krut, who taught elementary school in Campbell for 40 years and is a member of Christ the Good Shepherd Parish and the former St. John the Baptist Parish, said the food blessing is “very important, particularly at my age.”
Krut’s basket contained ham, Easter sweetbread, bacon, kielbasa and Easter egg cheese made of eggs and sugar.
The custom of gathering at the church to have decorated baskets of foods, not eaten during Lent, but eaten during the first Easter meal, sprang from the peoples of Eastern and Central Europe.
Traditionally, the basket contains ham, a candle, eggs, cheese, salt, sweetbread, sausage or kielbasa and butter.
However, said Monsignor Peter M. Polando, St. Columba’s rector, it is not necessary to be Polish or of Eastern or Central European ancestry to enjoy the Blessing of the Easter basket tradition.
Whatever a family traditionally eats on Easter Sunday as a sign of celebration of Christ’s resurrection, whether it is lasagna and bracioli or steak and potatoes, they were invited to put together a basket representative of the foods they enjoy and begin a new Easter tradition of having the foods blessed.
“We find we enjoy eating the food on Easter more now that we know it is blessed,” Teri Kechler of Youngstown said of herself and her family.
Saturday was Kechler’s second time participating in the food blessing ceremony in recent years.
“We are not Eastern European, but I also find the Blessing meaningful because it brings back memories of when I was a child and attended the food blessing ceremony at Sts. Cyril and Methodious Church with my friend’s mother.
In addition to traditional foods like bacon and eggs, kielbasa and Easter bread, Kechler said with a laugh that her basket also contains two chocolate bunnies.
Laura Elder of Canfield, a member of St. Columba, is another for whom the tradition began in childhood.
“It was always my job to go to the Blessing of the Easter Basket with my father because he was Slovak and my mother was Irish.
Elder’s basket, over which Polando waved incense along with the other baskets, contained a custard made of sugar, eggs and milk; salt; kielbasa; a colored Easter egg; other foods, plus a lighted candle, which represents Christ as the light of the world.
Traditionally, after the food is blessed, it is taken home and eaten for breakfast on Easter Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
“What better way to observe a Christian feast at Easter than to gather around the table with food that has been blessed,” Polando said.