My Easter Basket

As you can probably tell by all of the Easter-themed posts the past few weeks, I very much enjoyed the Easter celebrations in Krakow. I suspect this will be my last Easter post until next year, but I couldn't let go of Easter until I had shown off my Easter basket.

On the Saturday before Easter Sunday, most Poles fill a basket with eggs, bread, sweets, meat (I considered substituting tofu, but didn't have time to buy some), and salt. They then take the basket to church where the priests bless it. On Easter morning, the Poles eat these blessed foods.

My friends told me what to put in the basket, and even suggested plants to make it look more attractive. So after my final dental appointment on Good Friday, I ran around Krakow gathering things to put in my basket.


Saturday morning I met friends for breakfast in a restaurant near the Rynek. Since we were meeting more friends later to go to church and have our baskets blessed, I took my basket with me. I wasn't alone. Everywhere we looked people were carrying baskets.

I noticed mine didn't look exactly like everyone else's. First, I am sure I was the only one with a green basket. Also, I seemed to be one of the few who had an entire loaf of bread in their basket, and I was probably the only one with pansies.

I know I was the only one with Cadbury mini eggs.


At the church, priests bless baskets every 15 minutes. We arrived just as a blessing was beginning, and I had to scramble up to the front to place my basket in the blessing area. Unfortunately I forgot to remove the cloth napkin that was covering the food, so technically the holy water didn't actually touch most of the stuff in the basket.

No matter, carrying my basket around the streets of Krakow for five hours made me feel like a true Krakovian.

And as my British friend suggested to me, mini eggs are even better when they've been blessed. Same goes for the egg salad sandwiches I made out of the eggs.