Easter Memories, Greeting Cards, and Lefse

Easter is a strange holiday in that it’s constantly moving around on the calendar like a hyperactive mouse who has just consumed its body weight in caffeine.

If you were born on the Fourth of July, you would know that your birthday always falls on the fourth. Its day of the week varies from year to year, which means that you are given a three-day weekend every few years to celebrate or recover from your birthday.

Not so if you were born on Easter. The formula that determines the dates for Easter involves tracking the phase of the moon and checking to see if Jupiter has aligned with Mars. No, wait. That’s how we will know if it’s the Age of Aquarius.

In any event, if you were born on Easter and if someone asks when your birthday is you would have to reply, “I was born in late March, but my birthday often comes in early to mid-April. It can even arrive as late as May 1 if you go by the Julian calendar. I’ll have to consult my calendars and my ancient astronomic charts and get back to you.”

Despite the fact it can change its dates as easily as a baseball player changes his socks, Easter is traditionally a holiday that’s chockfull of traditions. One of my most cherished traditions involves getting together with my family and eating so much food that we chant our traditional incantation, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!”

A traditional food my family enjoys at all major holidays is lefse. For the uninitiated, lefse is a thin, flatbread-like substance that’s made from potatoes. It’s the Scandinavian version of a tortilla.

Mom taught all of her daughters and many of her grandchildren how to make lefse. Mom’s recipe produces lefse that’s thin as Bible leaves and as delicate as lace. I have tried other people’s lefse and have found that it’s often best suited for shoe repair.

Thankfully, Mom also passed along her lefse recipe, which contains a traditional ingredient called “instant potatoes.” This is because boiled potatoes must be riced before they can be made into lefse, and ricing a pile of boiled potatoes involves approximately as much manual labor as digging the Grand Canyon.

One Easter tradition that seems to have fallen by the wayside is sending greeting cards.

I have somehow come into possession of postcards that were sent during the Easters of 1917 and 1919 by my great-aunt Clara, my grandma Nelson’s sister, to her parents, my great-grandparents.

For you young whippersnappers, postcards are the equivalent of a text. Except that you can’t delete them once they are sent. And it could take several days for them to arrive at the recipient.

The price of a postage stamp back then was a penny. I imagine the postcards themselves cost at least as much, effectively doubling the price tag for Clara to send her epistles.

The cover of Clara’s 1917 postcard features a pair of Dutch children. We’re talking wooden shoes, a windmill, and kids decked out in traditional Dutch garb. In a strange twist, Clara wrote her message to her parents in Norwegian, their first language.

It’s difficult to decipher Clara’s cursive, which is faded and written in pencil, and I know no Norwegian. Complicating matters is that Clara seems to have thought that punctuation is totally optional. Even so, I was able to sense the feelings behind the salutation which reads, “Kjaere Mama og Papa.” 

It doesn’t take much to figure out that Clara, a young newlywed at that time, missed her parents.

The postcard was simply addressed to “Mr. and Mrs. C.N. Sveen, Volga, South Dakota.” There’s no rural route number, and I was disappointed to see that Clara had neglected to include a ZIP code. But then I learned that ZIP codes weren’t put into use until 1963.

The 1919 card is written in English and was addressed to “Miss Elida Nelson, Volga, South Dakota, c/o C.N. Sveen.” My grandma Nelson.

Clara didn’t share any earth-shattering news. She wrote that she hoped everyone was doing well back at home and that she had spent the day washing clothes before posting the card. Crowded into super-tiny script in a margin is, “Alex sends greetings.” Alex was Clara’s husband.

There isn’t much that’s notable about these notes. But it’s clear that Clara was striving to sustain a connection over long distances with her family during the Easter season.

I hope that Clara was able to enjoy some family time during those long-ago Easters. And I would be willing to bet that her family gatherings involved heaps of sumptuous, delicate lefse.

 Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.