Bless my Easter Basket (and my sausage)!

For as long as I can remember my dad and I would take an Easter basket to church on Saturday before Easter and the priest would bless the contents of the basket. This lovely Polish tradition still makes me smile so I am looking for a Polish church in the Miami area where we can go to bless our basket on Saturday morning!

So, what goes into a traditional Polish Easter basket?
Colored eggs. In Poland they can be painted and carved wooden eggs, but most times it is the Pisanki eggs. These are the ones dipped in a succession of color and then the color covered in wax, then the next color, then more wax until the egg is completely covered in wax. Then the wax is removed to reveal the designs. The designs also have various symbolic meanings. There are also Skrobanki eggs where a design was scratched on to them. Oklejanki eggs are ones with a succession of papers glued and sealed.

You would have sausage, ham, bread, butter, salt and horseradish. Flowers from your garden, perhaps a bottle of wine if your basket is large enough.

Eggs: symbolize life, spring and the Resurrection.
Bread: Christ, who is the bread of Life
Sausage: the abundance and God's generosity
Horseradish: the passion of Christ
Salt: prosperity
Butter: good will. It usually pressed into a mold to make a lamb. As Jesus is the Lamb of God
Flowers: Joy (whatever you have blooming, pussy willows are good too)

You line your basket with fine small linens (large napkin size), stitched with flowers or religious symbols. Keep covered until they are ready to be blessed.

At home after your basket has been blessed, boiled eggs in the shells are cut into wedges. The head of the family carries a plate to each member of the family to take a piece of the egg and wish a Happy Easter.

Easter Monday is known as Smigus Dyngus or Wet Monday where people will sprinkle or completely douse each other with water. Why? Because Prince Mieszko was married and baptized on Easter Monday in 966 and the whole nation was baptized along with him.

In Poland Easter is celebrated all week long. Not just on Sunday, what a great idea!!

Happy Easter!! Bless my sausage!