Balancing Easter and Passover

In just a short period of time, they'll be simultaneously told that they're among the chosen people while they've also been saved from their sins on Easter Sunday. What a deal.

But it won't always be easy. When they're older, they'll have to deal with 40 days of Lent, when Christians are supposed to give up something or do good deeds (it ain't all about the malted milk balls). Then for Passover, they'll be expected to forgo flour products for eight days. At about that time, they might get a little sick of multiculturalism.

Then there are the times when the holidays overlap. It might become complicated if it's Passover when Grammy serves her famous Easter meat bread and we'll have to take a pass. Or if Good Friday, a day when Christians are supposed to refrain from eating meat (it was always fish-n-chips night when I was a kid), coincides with one of the first two nights of Passover and we have to pass on the meat course.

In an attempt to tie to the two traditions together, I'm going to introduce my parents to their first Seder dinner at my house this year. My hope is that once my folks experience a Passover dinner, they'll become a part of the yearly Jewish celebration and be able to share the traditions with my kids and know what the word haroseth means. Now I can't promise that they'll acquire a taste for Passover gefilte fish, that white herring stuff pickled in a mysterious clear gelatin substance. I certainly never have, despite the fact that I've tried it for several years by smothering the herring in copious quantities of horseradish hoping that the burn in my nose from the horseradish will cancel out the taste of the gefilte fish. (It never does.) Now I just have to try to conceal my revulsion when I dish out the pickled fish to my kids.

Once the Easter bunny has been posed with (or cried at) and the dreadful yellow, sugary marshmallow Peeps are gone (I just know my mom will buy them), once the matzo crumbs have been vacuumed up, and the Passover books tucked away for another year, I can only hope that I've begun putting my kids on a track to be well rounded kids who can appreciate cultural diversity, even when it comes in the form of pickled fish.