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My Favorite Easter Gift

Every year as Easter approaches, I think back on my childhood days with my family in New Orleans. Church was a feature every Sunday, but Easter Sunday brought something special:  the music!  I delighted in the lively hymns we got to sing on that Sunday.  The music was glorious, and I relished sitting next to Dad and singing along with him.  Easter music was indeed a great gift, but not my favorite Easter gift.  

Back home on Easter Sunday, another gift from my parents awaited:  an Easter basket filled with fake straw planted with Easter candy!  The candy came from the Elmer's candy company.  (Alas, there was no See's to be found back then.)   At Easter time, Elmer's produced a variety of “eggs” - candies roughly shaped liked eggs but flat on one side and covered with colorful foil wrappings.  My favorites were Caramel Fudge and Maple Nut.  Oh, were they good!  But the Easter baskets were not my favorite Easter gift.  

One year I bypassed the Easter basket and opted instead for Elmer's top-of-the-line Easter treat – a thick-shelled oval of chocolate wrapped in gold foil.  To my childhood eyes, it looked as big as a football!  The hollow shell was filled with Elmer's signature “gold bricks”:  little cubes of chocolate and nuts wrapped in more gold foil.  Yes, Top-of-the-Line for sure, but still not my favorite Easter gift.  

In addition to the candy, my folks sometimes had another Easter surprise in store.  In preparation, Mom would gather a few eggs from the grocery and magically blow out the contents leaving the shells intact.  She would then turn the empty shells over to my Dad to work his own brand of magic.  He would dye each egg a chosen color, then glue carefully folded paper onto it.  Next he would paint his creation with a fine brush.  And voila!  He had transformed the egg into the likeness of an animal!  I remember best the pink pig and the multicolored chicken.  They were works of art, but they were not my favorite Easter gift.  

No, my favorite Easter gift easily bested any of these other Easter delights.  For while my favorite came only once, it has lasted for a lifetime.  I received this precious Easter gift way back when I was only three years old.  For on Easter Sunday of that year, my sister was born.