#52 Ancestors Week 37 High and Low: The Great Scrivener Easter Egg Hunt

 

When I was growing up, back in the Dark Ages, Easter was a rather formal occasion, requiring wearing one's best clothes and attending church services.  This picture shows me with my five siblings in our Easter finery outside our family home in 1966. Of course, we also had the tradition of finding the baskets of goodies that the Easter Bunny had hidden for us. 

As we grew up, married, and had children of our own, the family tradition evolved into something a little less formal.  With 30 children among us and more than 40 grandchildren, we had a seemingly endless supply of little ones at our family gatherings.  The Great Scrivener Easter Egg Hunt was one of the traditions we developed to keep all those busy little bodies occupied. 

I am not sure exactly when we started this, but the earliest picture that I have is from about 2000.  If you look closely, you can see that it's the same house with the same porch in the background, just a different angle. We always made the impatient egg hunters take a group photo before anyone was allowed to start hunting.  Several of the youngsters in this picture now have children of their own who look forward to the annual egg-hunting event.

At first my brothers took charge of hiding the eggs, but as the children grew older they were dragooned into helping. Here my brother Dave is assisted by his nephew Matt. Eventually, as the number of participants grew, we developed more sophisticated strategies including setting aside an area for the toddlers where the eggs were simply laid out on the ground for them to pick up.  For the older kids, the hiders delighted in finding the most obscure hiding places possible. 

Of course, the younger children often brought helpers with them. 

Here is another group photo from 2009. 

Showing off one's haul was always an important part of the hunt. 

And the opening of the eggs was another sacred ritual that required intense concentration. 

Until 2014, the hunt was held at my mother's home. Here is a photo of the hunters from that year. You can see that we like to start them young for this event. (Also, that some families still go all in for Easter finery!)

The next year, the operation was moved to my brother's home because it had just gotten too big for my mother to handle.  Fortunately, Rob and Anne Marie were very generous in inviting us to their spacious home with lots of surrounding ground to hide eggs.

Here is the Egg Hunt photo from 2015 at the new location with another outstanding group of eager egg hunters.

 And a few shots of the younger egg hunters at work.  The always fashion-forward Harper. 

Anna with her assistant.

Sadly, we had to cancel the Egg Hunt for two years during the Covid Pandemic.  But in 2022, we were back and better than ever!

Naturally, a complex event like this requires lots of advance preparation, including shopping for prizes and filling hundreds of eggs, not to mention collecting the many jars of coins needed to fill up all those eggs. Plus rounding up enough teenagers to hide the eggs. (Sometimes bribes were necessary.)Here is a photo of some of our young helpers sorting out the eggs to match up the pieces. 

For many years, my sister Maripat and I supervised this process.  But we finally retired this year and handed over the title of Supreme Mistress of the Egg Hunt to our niece Katie.  She stepped up to the task admirably and we look forward to continuing The Great Scrivener Easter Egg Hunt for many years to come.  I don't think we will ever run out of eager egg hunters.