“My Dad wants to host a Passover seder,” my husband said as I packed for our family’s recent trip to Los Angeles to see the sights, glimpse celebrities, and tour colleges for my son. I continued folding my beach gear, too excited to worry about the stress of Passover and Easter falling so close together this year. “We should host rather than drive to Long Island because the kids have school,” he said.
I dropped my cover-up. A pit formed in my stomach as it does each year when the holidays coincide, and we host. It’s so much work, and neither holiday ends up feeling special.
When the kids were younger, demands came from the grandparents who wanted the children to be fully immersed in their cultures and religious traditions. My mother wooed them with elaborate goody-stuffed Easter baskets, while their other grandma showered them with Passover plague finger puppets and seder coloring books. We shuttled them from New Jersey to Long Island, to New Jersey, to Staten Island, and back to New Jersey again.
As my children grow, additional stress stems from getting my oldest home from college, fitting celebrations in with school schedules, and knowing that as we reach new milestones, things will continue to change.
This year, with the bitter-sweet reminder that my middle child is poised to fly the nest hovering in my mind, I’ll channel a laid-back West Coast vibe, take a deep breath, and figure out how to make it all work — without losing sight of what’s important.
Passover and Easter are so opposite that sometimes it’s comical
When you’re part of a religiously mixed family, onlookers can’t see the differences, but you can certainly feel them. I mean, what do Easter and Passover have in common besides eggs? Not much. There is the ritual of hiding Easter eggs and hiding the afikomen (matzoh) for the kids to hunt. But, I swear that’s the only commonality I’ve found over the years.
Courtesy of Holly Rizzuto Palker.
Fluffy bunnies and frogs (one of the ten plagues represented during the seder) aren’t even the same species. But since they’re happy little spring critters that take center stage during Easter and Passover, when my kids were youngsters, we leaned heavily into filling the week with chocolate rabbits and googly-eyed stuffed frogs because they’re fun.
Matzoh balls versus meatballs: now those are difficult spheres to reconcile. I mean, my Italian family gorges on carbs during Easter weekend, and the Jewish side abstains from grain for the whole week. To bridge the two, I’ve devised a meal called “Erev Passover Marinara,” during which I serve meatballs the night before the Passover seder begins. It satisfies a few traditions at once for us.
We bend the rules
This year, as we roast an egg in the oven, to represent the circle of life on our symbolic seder plate, we’ll color Easter eggs, too. My husband will make time for it, even if that means abridging the Haggadah during the first night of seder. Why? He understands that since we’ve decided to raise our children in his Jewish faith, I hold Catholic holiday traditions even more dear as a link to my heritage.
Matzoh brei, the morning-after-seder sugar-covered, breadless version of French toast, is a no-brainer. Does it mean, however, we won’t eat semolina on Easter Sunday even if it falls during the week of Passover? No. A number of years ago, my husband conceded that it wasn’t practical to keep things grain-free for the entire week of Passover when Easter overlapped.
And for me, although attending Catholic School embedded strict rules in my mind, the edicts can be impossible to follow during Passover. For instance, if Good Friday falls during a seder meal, I’ll repent and eat meat, refusing to believe I’ll be punished. And so we go.
We’ve gained perspective on how to make it work for our family
It took many years for us to tune out the extended family noise and focus on our kids’ holiday celebrations. Knowing the grandparents meant well, but rising above the underlying push-and-pull when Easter and Passover coincided wasn’t easy. Bunnies, church, matzoh, seder — it was dizzying. We learned to improvise.
This year, as I lay plague finger puppet on each Passover plate, I’ll try to concentrate on being lucky enough to have all three of my kids and three of the grandparents (unfortunately, my mother-in-law has passed) with us to celebrate both magical holidays. Who knows where my son will go to college once he graduates? I hope he’ll be able to join us. After all, being together as a family is what matters most.
