Joyful Eating Foods for Spring Holidays By Sandra Garson l Holiday Meals

Almost everywhere on Earth, Spring is greeted with mayhem like April Fools' pranks and merriment like Maypole dancing. Even religious holidays go for mirth that destroys inhibitions to allow for an unabashedly joyful celebration of winter’s death. This seasonal transition is supposed to be good’s bright, warm triumph over cold, dark evil, and special foods are always served to make the moment even more delicious, easier to savor. Here are some of the world’s edible holiday tributes to the arrival of Spring.

Sandra Garson, a well-known cook for Dharma centers from Maine to Mongolia, is the author of Veggiyana, the Dharma of Cooking and How to Fix a Leek and Other Food From Your Farmers’ Market.

Jewish Hamantaschen for Purim

The M’gillah says Jews created a feasting, merry making holiday to celebrate Queen Esther’s triumph over the ancient Persian vizier Haman, who plotted to kill them. That’s Purim, which greets Spring with a besotted glee intended to commemorate liberation from danger. It’s a moment for mischief, masquerade, and mixing everything up. Its hallmark is the buttery, triangular, jam-filled pastry called Hamantaschen. Since that literally means “Haman’s pouch”, some say the pastry symbolizes the money Haman offered King Ahasuerus for permission to destroy the Jews. Others think it resembles the ancient Babylonian dice Haman cast to determine the day for killing. Others insist the triangular pastry re-creates Haman’s tri-cornered hat. Everybody agrees that to enjoy Hamantaschen is to devour a scheming villain and that is very merry indeed.

Tibetan Fortune Telling Soup for Losar

Two days before Losar, their lunar New Year, Tibetan families gather to eat a special noodle soup, guthuk, which literally means nine noodles. Odd numbers are suspicious and nine, in particular, is associated with good luck, so this noodle soup must be made from nine ingredients. The special one is the fat dough ball in every bowl. It conceals a tiny strip of paper with a metaphoric word that will reveal the eater’s secret self. Wool means gentle, chili means sharp tongued, coal black hearted, paper foolish, glass delicate and salt lazy. Tibetans have fun with these “divinations” as warnings about personality to emerge in the year to come.

Cabbage for St. Patrick’s Day

St Patrick’s Day celebrates the birth of a new Christian Ireland, rid of its Pagan past, and nothing symbolizes birth better than spring time. That’s the reason for all the wearing of the green. The Irish shamrock was revered as the signal of liberation from winter’s tight grip, and thanks to St Patrick’s conversion effort, its three leaves came to represent the holy Christian trinity that could liberate the soul. But it isn’t edible, so cabbage became the table centerpiece of the holiday and not just because it is green. As the first ‘heads up’ of the growing season, its ground breaking was a sure sign, good news, of time to plant potatoes. St. Patrick’s Day gave people a break from the constraints of Lent, so they joyfully served up bacon with that cabbage and pounds of fresh butter with the soda bread and made merry with drink.

Sprouts for Nowraz, Persian New Year

Persians/Iranians celebrate their New Year, Nowraz, on the spring solstice and traditionally serve seven symbolic dishes that all begin with the S letter. Chief among them is sabzeh, sprouts, wheat or lentil, to signify rebirth. In addition to being presented plain, they appear cooked into a sweet, creamy and complex pudding called Samanu. The accompanying dishes are seeb or apple for health and beauty, seer or garlic for medicine, serkeh or vinegar for patience, and its corollary for age. Somaq, sumac berries, which stand for the color of sunrise, signify the brightness of good conquering the darkness of evil and senjed, the fruit of the lotus tree, whose heady fragrance and fruit make people fall in love.

Milk for Hindu Holi

Holi is the Hindu holiday on the new moon closest to Spring equinox. Like Hebrew Purim, it’s a moment of unabashed merriment. Holi means burning and celebrates the legend of a prince saved by godly devotion from a devilish king who tried to burn him alive. On its eve bonfires are lit to destroy any lingering evil, as well as dirty clothes and bedding. The day starts with pranksters splashing red dye on everyone and everything. Often a pot of buttermilk is hung high on the street and men form a human pyramid until one breaks the pot with his head, keeping alive the mischievous nature of Lord Krishna who was so fond of buttermilk, he used to steal it from every house in the village. Women tried to hang it high out of sight. Into all this mayhem comes thandai, a fragrant, nutritious but alcoholic milk drink served to energize and cool the merrymakers’ body and spirit. Thandai means, “something that cools.”

Eggs for Christian Easter

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is always celebrated during the resurrection of the Earth after the dead of winter, so not surprisingly the universal symbol of this Spring holiday is the egg, source of new life. Children run wild in egg rolling and egg hunts. The custom of coloring Easter eggs comes from early Mesopotamian Christians who stained them red to commemorate the blood of Christ, shed at the crucifixion that led to eternal life. We fill Easter baskets with brightly colored eggs and an Easter bunny because rabbits are so quick to reproduce. Europeans make special egg breads and egg-shaped cakes, some with cooked eggs actually nestled in them. Ukrainians dye raw eggs (usually red for life blood) and painstakingly draw symbols on the shell - like ribbons for eternity and triangles for the trinity of birth, life and death - to create exquisite Pysanky as protection from fire and evil.