Every year families gather to celebrate Easter; a christan holiday. Many families have different traditions that they do every year. Some families base their traditions on heritage or culture. Mary Ann Aken–my grandmother– enjoys creating pysanky eggs each year. Pysanky eggs are a way of showing Ukrainian and Polish culture. For 23 years she has enjoyed making them each Easter while also being able to shower her family more of her culture. Aken shares what these eggs symbolize and mean; “ The eggs are supposed to have symbols connected to Easter and the resurrection and Christ and new life,” Aken said. Behind the meaning of these eggs there is a lot of history that shows the different ways of life, “these were mainly done by peasants who had to survive in farm life… so they would put ram, sheep or deer symbolizing food,” Aken said. 

Every year Aken likes to look for some sort of theme or inspiration while also sticking to basic symbols known in designing pskansy eggs. “ I have looked at previous pysanky designs because most of the designs are connected with symbolism that has to do with christanity. When we started we did very traditional egg designs with symbolic meanings and then as we went on with some symbolic meanings but also included pure design shapes as well,” Aken said. 

The Symbols resemble different biblical meanings Aken shares what each symbol stands for, “When you see animals they represent food on the table, wheat also stands for wheat on the table, anything that has a band on it or around it represents life without end, the triangle symbolizes the holy trinity… man, woman, and child, and air, fire, and water, and the dots represent the tears of marry that shedded for jesus,” Aken states. 

This year Aken is looking forward to designing eggs once more. Aken gives us an insight to her inspiration this year, “This particular year I want to do Sheep and rams with trees,” Aken said.  

On such a religious holiday it is important to celebrate traditions tied to culture and heritage, Marry Ann Aken enjoys showing her heritage off while celebrating Easter by designing pysanky eggs. “It is possible to explore without doing these eggs while also sticking to the christain symbols as well… the variation is limitless,” Aken says. All the hard work and dedication pays off for Aken “It’s so exciting to get the result,” Aken expresses.

Easter allows people to tie in culture and religion together. Families gather around and make more and more memories each year, for Mrs. Aken, she enjoys making her Easter memories with her family by making pskansky Easter eggs.