Easter in the 80s: How A Dress Changed My Perspective

I grew up in a mid-sized Southern Baptist Church in South Alabama. During the 80’s, this meant certain things when it came to Easter. For one thing, it meant taking the usual Church Clothes up a notch. Everyone dressed up for Easter. My family was no exception. My mother made sure my brothers and I were dressed to the nines come Easter Morning.

The boys wore things like shortalls, bubble suits, or darling little coat and bowtie combinations with knickers, white knee socks, and new saddleback shoes. 

Meanwhile, my Easter attire was always a special new dress. Since my mother and grandmother were excellent seamstresses.  my Easter frocks were handmade by them. They could sew anything, and I’m convinced they aimed to prove it most especially around Easter.

I have vivid memories of standing on my grandmother’s kitchen table, no older than 5 or 6, trying my best to hold still as she measured and tucked and pinned the pieces of an Easter frock that would be fit for a royal wedding. 

If you have never had the pleasure of standing on your grandmother’s kitchen table while she asked you to turn by varying degrees to the right or left for an entire Saturday evening, you have not lived. But the real fun was when Mawmaw said it was time to take the pinned-together dress off.  She had to do something akin to brain surgery in order to remove it from my body. It was no simple thing to make sure the pins neither slipped from their precise place in the dress, nor took out chunks from my flesh while she shimmied it over my head. Eventually, there was giggling out of both of us, which only made the surgery more risky.

I would give all the dresses in my closet to have one more night like that.

When it came to my dresses, Mawmaw and Mama liked lace. And ruffles. Also, material that was stiff and itchy. They wanted the skirt, which was cut above the knees, to be so full that it stood parallel to the floor. I never could put my arms all the way down by my side during pictures because there was just too much material to mash down.

It was a given that everyone in my family wore something new on Easter, Mom and Dad included. Usually, we coordinated in some way. Sometimes there was plaid. Almost always pastels. And every now and then, a bit of navy or nautical was thrown in. But not too much! In general, the goal for the family picture was for us to look like a group of dyed Easter Eggs. Usually, we fit the bill perfectly. 

The boys had mandatory hair appointments the week before Easter. They needed some time to let the sun brown up the recently shaven part of their neckline lest it be terribly obvious that they had just gotten a haircut. 

While I didn’t require a fresh cut, Mother took pains to curl my hair. She then pulled it back on the sides, and secured it with a bow that was made from the same material as my dress. The bow itself usually dripped with ribbon and lace as well, because my Mother is nothing if not extra. And she was extra extra when it was Easter.

Except that one year that she stopped being Easter Extra when it came to her own Easter dress. It was the year she began teaching the Younger Elementary Sunday School Class. About that same time, a new ministry had been initiated by Mr. Rudet Bailey and Mr. Charles Thomley called the Bus Ministry. On Sunday mornings Mr. Rudet and Mr. Charles would drive the church bus around town and kids from low-income housing and various other neighborhoods would hop on and come to church. Several of the Bus Children were in Mother’s Sunday School class. 

The Bus Children came to Sunday School in clothes that didn’t look like Church Clothes. They often had holes in their jeans, and shoes that were a size or two too big. Sometimes their hair wasn’t brushed, and their noses weren’t wiped. 

The night before Easter on that particular year, Mother began ironing to a crisp the boys’ little knickers and Dad’s baby blue shirt. After that, she moved on to her new floral dress. My dress, having never been shipped or folded, was already pristinely hanging from a hanger.

After everyone’s clothes were wrinkle free, Mother began studying her Sunday School lesson and gathering supplies for the craft. As she did, the faces of the Bus Children came to her mind. Mama had a special tenderness for those who might feel left out or less than. Almost certainly, the Bus Children wouldn’t arrive at church wearing anything new the next morning. She worried about how the Bus Children would feel, seeing people who always dressed nicer than them all wearing new and even nicer clothes on Easter Sunday. 

She woke up early Easter morning, dressed all of us in our new duds, curled up my hair, and laid out Dad’s new shirt and tie. But instead of the freshly ironed dress hanging in the laundry room, she chose a dress from her closet that she had worn many times before. It was plainer than most of her others, and one that any child who had been in her class more than a Sunday or two would surely recognize.

We took the obligatory Easter Picture on the front steps, loaded up in the blue Oldsmobile, and commenced the drive into town for church. I sat in the back with my brothers, who complained that my dress was touching them the whole way there. When we arrived, Mom checked us over as we scooted out of the car, and deposited each of us to our respective Sunday School classes before she went upstairs to teach her own.

I have no idea if any of the Bus Children were in Mother’s Sunday School class that Easter. I don’t know if they noticed that everyone else had on new things. And I don’t know if they took comfort from the fact that their teacher did not. 

But I do know one little girl who noticed. Although she wasn’t even in the Lower Elementary Sunday School class. She’s grown up now, with her own children to get ready for church on Easter. And even though it’s been years since that Sunday when her Mother traded a lovely new dress for an old one in order to love the least of these in some small but deeply compassionate way, the memory still bears much weight on the way she thinks, and prays, and lives.