Pisanki

When I was growing up, my maternal great-grandmother and I used to make these eggs for Easter -- though nothing this elaborate, of course.  My grandmother, my great-grandmother's daughter, frowned upon this elaborate custom and grumbled every year we did this.  I thought it was because it messed up her kitchen (Great Grandma lived with her).  But much later I realized it was because this was a Polish custom, Catholic, in our overwhelmingly  Protestant, Lutheran Church Missouri Synod Swedes and Germans, which we too, were.  Except Great-Grandma -- she was Polish and came from a Catholic background.  She renounced her Roman church upbringing in order to marry my rigidly Lutheran, Swedish great-grandfather, before they moved to North Dakota.  It was one of many family secrets concealed from us, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren.  As I was in the age cohort of the first great grandchildren born, I spent a great deal of time cared for in my earliest years by Great Grandma (whereas her death arrived before my third sibling reached the age of consciousness), and thereby absorbed a great deal of information, that, though I wasn't able to process it until much later, made a great deal of sense out of what was so mysterious as to be a negative space in my understanding.  Great Grandma could speak Swedish and German like both sets of our grandparents (while our parents could speak only English), but there was another language, in which she sang.

Pisanki comes from the Polish verb pisac, "to write."

Doesn't it seem likely that the famous Fabergé eggs are inspired by this traditional Easter egg?


You can see more about the Pisanki tradition here.

Happy Easter!