Easter in Belize

Easter approached. The holiday vied with Christmas celebrations in importance to British Hondurans, and probably came out ahead. Lent was ovserved quite strictly by both Catholics and Protestants, and the end of it was an enormous occasion. The four-day Easter holiday closed Belize City down completely. Workers escaped as soon after noon on the Thursday as employers would permit. Good Friday was observed with solemn devotion and after that, it was pure celebration that lasted until early Tuesday morning.

Pete McNab with his wife Kay, a delightful Canadian couple, arrived at the Fort George Hotel to fill in while the manager was on holiday. They were about our age, from Toronto, and had an enchanting four-year-old daughter, Colleen, who fitted nicely between our children’s five and two years. The McNabs had been operating a Colonial Development Corporation hotel on Eleuthra in the Bahamas. They were enthusiastic about the opportunity to see Belize and were still aglow at having recently won many thousands of dollars in the Irish Sweepstakes on the first ticket they ever had bought.

Kay and I joined forces to make a traditional Easter for our combined children.

Dyed eggs were the prime requisite. Belize always ran short of eggs at Eastertime, either because of the heavy demand for them for holiday baking or because the hens gave up work early along with the rest of the populace. Even the prestigious Fort George was cut short on its egg order.

Kay put her basket over her arm and, with her maid in tow, departed from the hotel, determined to rout out any eggs lurking in the market. Each vendor insisted that she had none. Finally Kay found a hefty Creole woman who agreed to supply two eggs. As she was fumbling for change to pay for them, Kay heard a hen cackling. Kay insisted on inspecting the well-hidden nest and found three more eggs that she promptly purchased, at a price that horrified her watching maid.

Back at the Fort George, Kay coaxed a dozen precious eggs from the reluctant chef. We sent both nursemaids, with all three children, to our rooms and used Kay’s veranda for our dyeing operations. We had a wonderful time reverting to a cherished childhood activity and wondered how old our three should be before we let them take over the fascinatingly messy project.

Thoughtful Gene Maestre, without telling us, had included our families in his order for Easter baskets brought down by the ASA pilots. The colorful gifts were large, elaborately filled, and unavailable in Belize shops. Kay and I wondered to each other if it would mean as much to the children to have traditional Easter baskets as it did to their mothers to be able to provide them.

 

The McNabs and Scotts conferred that evening after dinner and decided that Easter morning was one time we would not be ogres about hushing the children. Both families normally tried hard to keep domestic noise to a minimum. The hotel had few guests, as it happened, over the four-day holiday, but the children were surprisingly good Easter Sunday, despite their excitement.

After church we asked Kay, Pete, and Colleen to join us in a drive. Both nursemaids had the day off; Pete’s assistant was on duty; and we all thought that after the early morning Easter Egg Hunt we could do the hotel the courtesy of removing the children temporarily. We loaded the two families into the ranch wagon and took our first run over what became our favorite short drive.

We started out the Western Highway, through Lord’s Ridge Cemetery where the road divides briefly, and continued west for about twelve miles. A turn to the right took us on a slow drive over a poor road through scruffy, wild country, past isolated small frame houses on stilts, to the wooded green shade of the lush growth bordering the Belize River in the little village of Burrell Boom.

The name came from the chain or boom stretched across the river to catch mahogany logs drifting down from logging sites far inland. At the boom, logs were chained together in rafts hundreds of feet long in preparation for being towed down the river and out to ships waiting in the harbor.

A wooden ferry, laboriously cranked by hand, carried passengers and one or two vehicles at a time across the river. From the far side it was a short ride to the main Northern Highway, and back to Belize. The entire triangular trip was about twenty five miles long and took two hours or more.

 

Residents of Belize City enjoyed Easter in a variety of ways. People who owned vacation homes on St. George’s Caye, a few miles from the city, not far from the reef, packed up their families and moved out for the holiday. People with ties to the villages along the coast piled into sailboats and went home for visits. Those whose families lived inland took less comfortable transport in stake-body trucks, sitting on bare boards stretched from one side to the other. They shared space with cages of poultry and occasionally a cow or pig, wedged sideways between the board seats.

Those who remained in the city paraded. The informal processions of families strolling along the sea walls on Easter Sunday began around dawn and continued until dark. All of the churches—and there were many—had services off and on throughout the day, so there was always a crowd going to or leaving church. It was a tradition to promenade about town, enjoying the spring breezes, and showing off new clothes.

Men, women, and children seemed newly outfitted. British Hondurans were very style-conscious and fought to get hold of British and American fashion books. Seamstresses were skillful, copying from pictures and working without patterns. A wide range of materials was available. Easter outfits were marvels of style and good taste.

The parading children were enchanting. Solemn little girls wore pastel dresses with lace-edged round collars, fitted bodices, puffed sleeves, and full skirts of dimity, organdy, net, or dotted Swiss over billowing petticoats. Sisters, whose proud heads formed a series of stair steps as the girls diminished in size, walked daintily down the sea wall in identical dresses. Often little brothers wore crisp short-sleeved shirts, in colors to match their sisters’, over short white pants. I remember counting families of seven, eight, and nine children in stately single file, greeting the holiday bedecked in pristine outfits alike in cut and color.

Each year brought a different favorite color. One year there would be a preponderance of yellow; another year, pink; and another aqua or lavender or spring green.

Through the years I watched the Easter parade with undiminished pleasure until, in time, the parades themselves disappeared.