The Traditional Easter Basket
written by Maria Fredriksson for The Ember Journal Issue Seven.
The tradition of the Easter Basket can be traced back as far as the 1200’s. There are many variations, but we are drawing from Eastern European customs. The traditional Easter basket is tied to both the Lenten Fast as well as the customary food blessing in older Rites on Holy Saturday. You can find the traditional blessings in the Rituale Romanum.
The blessing typically takes place in the morning of Easter Saturday when people bring their food in linen covered baskets often decorated with greenery.
When the contents of the basket are being used for the breakfasts of Easter Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, they usually contain everything from early spring greens to multiple types of sweet breads and cakes to soft cheese, butter, sausage, ham, and horseradish.
To make your own traditional Easter basket (you can make small versions to give to friends!), use the following seven traditional items:
White linen – often richly embroidered and passed down in families, the white linen both lines the basket and goes over the food as a covering. A good substitute in America where linen cloths are hard to come by would be the white cotton sack dishcloths.
A wicker basket – true wicker baskets are specifically hard to find now, but any sturdy woven basket with a strong, stiff handle will work.
A white or beeswax candle – a candle, often tied with a red ribbon, is included in the basket to be lit during the blessing. It represents Christ as the Light of the World. On Holy Saturday, when the tabernacle is starkly open and the altar bare and no light has been lit since Tenebrae, the candles during the food blessing are just one more quiet anticipation of the Vigil to come.
Butter Lamb – butter or dairy is one of the main foods originally given up in the Great Lent fast of the ancient Church. Thus, the custom of making a butter lamb to bring to church for the blessing is often an integral part of the traditional basket. Its twofold symbolism includes the joy of the Easter feast as well as the more obvious representation of the Lamb of God.
Salt – often given up during the Lenten Fast, salt is added in to bring zest to life and preserve us from corruption.
Pisanki (Hardboiled Eggs) – authentic pisanki are the most well known Easter eggs with their intricate designs drawn in beeswax and multiple colors of dye. But authentic or not, the eggs are indicative of new life and the Resurrection. Early Church traditions included people walking around with Easter eggs dyed brilliant red on Easter Sunday and knocking them together in greeting with other people to symbolize the stone being rolled from the tomb.
Sweet Bread – the glorious point of Paska is that it includes all the rich foods given up during the Lenten fast – eggs, milk, butter, salt, yeast, and honey or sugar. If the Paska is too big to fit in the basket, it is often wrapped in its own white linen cloth.
Other items that may be included are: kolbasa (sausage) which symbolizes the chains of death broken when Jesus rose from the dead and God’s generosity in doing so; bacon which symbolizes the abundance of God’s mercy; horseradish, a reminder of the bitterness and harshness of the Passion of Jesus, and the vinegar it is mixed with to symbolize the sour wine given to Jesus on the Cross; ham or lamb to symbolize great joy and abundance in the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection; and hrudka (a soft, sweet cheese) a reminder to be moderate in feasting.
How to Make a Butter Lamb
Acquire a pound of butter in one block or 4 sticks. Set it out on the counter to warm up until it is fairly malleable. The butter will get more malleable as you work with it. Make sure you have clean hands and expect to get them very buttery before you are done.
Wax paper on your workspace makes a good surface for working on. If you have 4 sticks of butter, put two lengthwise together and the third stick in the middle on top of them. Use one half of the fourth stick to make a neck and face for your lamb and smooth it onto the “body.” Once the neck and head are smoothed on, stick a toothpick through the neck and into the main body to add extra reinforcement. You can smooth over where the toothpick went in so that no one knows the difference. Use the other half of the fourth stick to add ears, to round out the sides and bum of the lamb, and to add a little tail. Details such as wool texture and eyes can be added by shaping with a butter or frosting knife.
Cut the wax paper to size and put in a bread pan or other larger container. It hardens best if kept in the freezer for a few hours, but the refrigerator overnight also works well. When gifting a basket to others after the Easter Vigil, you can wrap it in plastic to keep it frozen until the last moment.
If you want a much larger butter lamb, use more butter sticks accordingly or use two large butter rolls of a pound each to piece the lamb together.
You may add a Paschal Banner. Cut out the shape of the flag in paper, color on the red cross, attach to a skewer or toothpick, and poke into the lamb at an angle over its shoulder.
Have you put together a traditional Easter basket before? What was in it?!
Did this article help you? We'd love it if you'd share it! ❤️
