>The Easter Parade - Author Susan Cushman

>The first time I saw mothers letting their little girls wear white shoes and dresses before Easter or after Labor Day, I was scandalized. And then I realized, the mothers weren’t from the South. And some of the mothers were even breaking this sacred fashion rule themselves! This is me and my brother, Mike, Easter 1953. I was two, and yes those shoes are white!

Check out this video from the Today show last year, when Meredith committed this fashion faux-pas and see what a reaction she got. (You have to click on the video in the MSNBC article, then suffer through the Downy ad first. Sorry.)

We had this discussion at our monthly Women of St. John (Orthodox Church) ladies lunch yesterday, but with a twist. The question asked by one of the younger women, a fairly recent convert to Orthodoxy, was this: “Which Easter signals the beginning of white-wearing days, Western or Eastern?”

If you’re not familiar with Orthodoxy, you might not realize that there are two dates for Easter. Western (primarily Catholic and Protestant) Easter is almost always earlier than Pascha, or Eastern Orthodox Easter. (Sometimes it’s the same Sunday.) This year the two feasts are a month apart, with the West celebrating this coming Sunday, March 23, and Orthodox Christians celebrating on April 27. (For links to information about the two dates for Easter, see my blog of March 9, here.

My answer was that the fashion rule is attached to Western Easter, because it started in the U.S., primarily amongst Southern women, and not in a “traditional Orthodox” country. But hey! If any of my readers have new light to shed on this, leave a comment and enlighten us!

And now, for more Easter Parade treats, check out this video from Dumont TV in 1958… it’s an “Easter Kids Fashion Show.”

Since my mother is Presbyterian, I sent her Easter card and gift this week. The card was perfect, because we had cats growing up. Here’s the cover, (left) and the text inside. (right) And yes, our name was Johnson.

But the gift was priceless. I created my very first video of it. I’m new at saving and downloading these things, so I hope it works. First, I’ll insert a photo of Effie’s Bunny Hopper (right) and now, here comes the video.

Since I’m immersed in my memoir, which uses clothes as its frame, I’ve been going through old photo albums, looking for representative pictures of fashions through the years. This one is from Easter 50 years ago, 1958, in Jackson, Mississippi.

And for those of you who read all the way through to the end of this post, a treat for your Easter basket, shared with me by a friend from Mississippi. It’s called “Peep Show.”

Get your white shoes ready, Mom!