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For a few years now, we’ve been having people over one evening as Easter appears to have an Easter egg painting party. We were squeezed for time this year; we weren’t sure whether or not we’d get everything together.

Then friends saved the day by beating us to the punch. The only thing we had to do: bring eggs.

As might be expected, L greatly enjoyed preparing the egg dye. It was, in fact, the first time we used store-bought dye. K usually boils the eggs with onions skins, turning the eggs a rich reddish-brown.

This was the first year L was old enough to paint, and she took to it like a natural. She was unfazed when her egg tumbled from the high kitchen counter where everyone was working. Once she had it back in her hands, she continued as if nothing happened.

It was the first year I didn’t paint an egg, though. Not the first time in my life, for I grew up not celebrating Easter.

When I got back home, I saw a message on a social networking site from a friend who was “spring cleaning/deleavening today!” Someone else who doesn’t celebrate Easter but instead, the Jewish Old Testament festivals.

Deleavening — cleaning the house to get literally every single crumb from the house, for leaven is a symbol of sin — seems much less enjoyable than what we were doing. I haven’t been involved in deleavening in many, many years now, and I must say: Easter egg painting is a much more rewarding spring tradition.

And you can’t exactly invite your friends over for an afternoon of deleavening.

Well, you could, but first you’d have to explain what it is. It can be, in its own way, a very spiritual activity:

I always pray for deleavening/unleavening because there are no voids in the universe. There is no “empty.” If something is taken away, it is replaced with something else (e.g., when water is removed from a glass, it is replaced with air).

Deleavening requires God’s help. Just as my house can’t deleaven itself (I have to do it), I can’t deleaven myself (God has to do it). I, though, choose to cooperate or resist and I am responsible for the choices I make. As I’m deleavened, those empty places need to be filled with unleavenedness, and God also has to do to do that (just as I make or buy unleavened bread and bring it into my house each year – I do wish sometimes it would materialize all by itself since my personality doesn’t lend itself to enjoying the precise formulation of baking). Again, I choose to cooperate or resist the unleavening part of the process. (All the Strange Hours)

One cannot wax theological about Easter egg painting.

Well, an egg is a symbol of life, but beyond that?

Really, it’s not important. There doesn’t have to be theological meaning behind everything in life. Sometimes, it’s just about the painting.