One Lamb and One Ham

Easter Feasts Rely on Two Great Legs

Centuries-old traditions mark the Easter meal, which in many ways is the quintessential Sunday dinner. Just as spring brings us new life and fresh possibilities, this yearly feast overflows with the first fruits of the harvest and other special foods.

Whether your tradition features succulent roasted lamb or mouthwatering glazed ham, though, depends on your family's heritage, as does the very date of the celebration.

Most western Christian cultures celebrate Easter on the Sunday immediately following the first full moon after the vernal equinox. But that's only half of the story. In Eastern Orthodox homes, Easter Sunday always falls after the Jewish feast of Passover. Some of the difference stems from the fact that Western churches use the Gregorian calendar to calculate the date of Easter, while Eastern Orthodox churches use the Julian calendar. Those distinct traditions merge every few years, including this one.

Throughout much of America, Easter means brightly colored eggs and white lilies. Easter is still the day of heaviest attendance at churches, where coats, ties, bright and lacy dresses, white gloves and new hats abound.

Here in the southern mid-Atlantic, especially, where traditions run back to Colonial times, the standard Easter Sunday table features a baked ham. There are, of course, many practical reasons for that: In America, as in Europe, the ancient craft of smoking as a way to preserve meat turned into an art. During the fall, after farmers slaughtered the fattened hogs, they cured whole, bone-in legs, then sewed them into muslin and hung them in smokehouses, where the hams picked up a rich flavor and deep terra cotta color. Each region created a distinct flavor by using a characteristic feed (corn, peanuts, even peaches) and its own techniques for curing (with salty brines, cane sugar or spicy dry-rubs), and smoking (over apple, pecan or hickory wood). A great ham hung for months and became a much-anticipated treat for the first spring dinner -- especially Easter -- accented by the season's first offerings from the garden.

Other Americans, especially those who can trace their ancestry to the ancient civilizations of Lebanon, Syria, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus and Macedonia, celebrate Eastern Orthodox Easter after a traditional 40-day fast, during which they eat no meat or dairy products. The solemn Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday is rich in symbolic liturgy, customs and traditional foods.

On Holy Thursday, when those churchgoers hear the story of the Last Supper, families eat a simple meal of lentil soup seasoned with herbs and vinegar. On Saturday, a traditional day of fasting, parishioners bring dyed-red Easter eggs for the priest to bless at the end of the midnight service. And then on Sunday morning, in a kind of family communion, the eggs are cracked one against the other as the fast is broken. Because the Easter celebration is the first meat meal after Lent, the best, most tender spring lamb becomes the centerpiece of the family table.

The Eastern Orthodox Easter celebration looks something like the meals in "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." Relatives and friends gather around the table to feast on lamb that has been slowly roasted with heady aromatic herbs until it is succulent and dripping with juice, served with roasted potatoes or baked orzo. This leisurely meal includes briny olives, stuffed grape leaves, fresh salads, roasted eggplant and peppers, cheeses and rustic breads. And to end it all, perhaps a honey-sweetened walnut cake or baklava, served with robust coffee or mint tea.

If your favorite Easter meal tastes like the South, you probably remember another kind of feast. Whether fruit-glazed or glazed with mustard and brown sugar, baked ham generally is accompanied by creamy macaroni and cheese and country greens, or scalloped potatoes with fresh buttery spring peas and sugar-glazed carrots. To finish this time-honored meal, a moist pineapple upside-down cake or lemon meringue pie is a tradition hard to beat.

No matter what your heritage or memories bring -- whether lamb or ham is the centerpiece -- Easter Sunday is not just about what's on the table. It's about who's around it with you to celebrate.

Russell Cronkhite, former chef at Blair House and author of "A Return to Sunday Dinner" (Multnomah, 2003), is a regular contributor to the Food section.