Editor’s note: The following article is an op-ed, and the views expressed are the author’s own. Read more opinions on theGrio.
I have vague a recollection of my first “Easter suit.” Almost everybody in the Black community, regardless of what kind of church you go to (or if you even celebrate Easter) is aware of the annual tradition of dressing up in your Absolute Finest—not to be confused with your Sunday’s Best, a step down and fine for regular old church Sundays and Christmas—to pull up to the stadium (church) for Christianity’s Super Bowl Sunday. The church crowns crown a little bit harder on Easter Sunday and the suits are a little bit sharper and flyer and crispier. The dresses on the little girls are their frilliest, as all children tried not to get dirty until after church. I don’t know who started the sub-tradition of pastels for Easter, but that person deserves a Nobel Prize for Culture; at some point Easter became so synonymous with pastel colors that even AFTER church, I come home and throw on some colors that represent the day. To this day, when I think pastels, I think Easter.
Oh yes, back to my first Easter suit and that vague recollection. In my mind, it was gray, likely off the rack from the Post Exchange on base where my family was stationed in Frankfurt, Germany—but as clean as ever. I loved a good gray suit. I also loved a good turtleneck but I can’t see my parents letting me go to church on Easter, of all days, in a turtleneck. What is more likely is that I wore a gray suit with a nice white shirt and a clip-on tie with with some fly new Hush Puppies or something. My dad, though…THAT man was the Easter suit king. Unlike the memories of my get ups, I have VIVID memories of my father’s clothing choices. My dad’s suits were noticeable (in a good way) and fit for a man who understood the assignment—every time. And don’t even get me started on his Stacy Adams footwear. As we like to say in the Black community, the brotha was “casket sharp.”
I don’t have the same relationship with Easter suits at this point in my life. Most of that departure from “tradition” is because of the type of church I go to. I attend a church in the suburbs of D.C. that is non-traditional in every way. I grew up in a United Methodist Church in Madison, Alabama. The reliance on tradition was high. My current church is come as you are and eschews the rigid, protocol-based nature of the church I grew up in, in favor of praise and worship, offerings and the sermon. It’s more streamlined in every way, intended to reach more people and it works; this church is always full at each of its three services, and ESPECIALLY so on Easter—the overflow rooms tend to be overflowing.
On Easter Sunday now, as opposed to the traditional suit-and-tie-and-hard bottoms I grew up with, I focus on Easter-appropriate colors, but in more of a business casual sense. It’s not uncommon to see parishioners wearing jeans with their new, flyest Jordans and nice polo shirts. The pastels are still present and accounted for, but the style of dress isn’t “traditional,” so to speak. It works perfectly for me and my family. My kids are dressed well, of course—there are no jeans and typically there are new shoes. The shirts are button-ups and the pants are khakis; the kids look sharp.
But there is a part of me that longs for the tradition I grew up with. There was something about getting that Easter suit and having it sit there in the closet—untouchable—until Easter Sunday morning. As I got older, I remember going with my parents to pick it out; we’d make a specific trip just to get that one new suit that was somehow more special than any other suit I already owned. My Easter suit was different.
As I got older, I also realized the dressing up tradition’s connection to Blackness across the country. When I got to Morehouse College, while all of my friends were from different places, one thing we all had in common was getting super fly with a new Easter suit. It was connective, it was cultural. It was like an understanding head nod to another Black person in an all white space. If you know, you know.
My kids don’t have that experience because our life doesn’t call for it the same way. Some of that is probably because while I’m from down South, my kids aren’t. Church, for a lot of us, is also different. So many churches nowadays are less formal, less concerned about how you show up—they just want you there. When I was a teenager, “Come As You Are” was every 4th Sunday, Youth Sunday. On that day, the youth choirs sang and we ran the service. Even in that sense, there was only so much “come as you are” in how we showed up. I think the kids wore jeans and appropriate t-shirts, but our parents often dressed a step down from Sunday’s Best. For my kids, every Sunday is “Come As You Are.”
Most of the churches that I’ve attended over the past twenty years haven’t been concerned at all about a dress code. Even the pastors wear sneakers and hoodies and jeans. And that’s changed the relationship with Easter, because while we all know to get fly for the day, it just looks different for my life now.
Of course, my concern about what Black traditions my kids will be familiar with by the time they go out into the world is probably unfounded. They’re still my kids and they’re still living the Blackest existence they can. And they’re from Washington, D.C. But as we prepare for Easter Sunday and pull their clothes together so they can be their flyest selves, I’m always tempted to go look for a suit that’s a little bit nicer than anything else they have.
Then again, I’m also looking through my stacks of Jordans for my “Sage” Jordan 5’s because pastel and because Easter. Maybe that can be our new Easter Suit tradition—pastel Jordans.
What will never change though, and maybe this is the point, is that we go to church on Easter Sunday—that’s the most important tradition. In our pastels, of course, but we’ll be there.
Happy Easter (to all who celebrate).
Panama Jackson is a columnist at theGrio and host of the award-winning podcast, “Dear Culture” on theGrio Black Podcast Network. He writes very Black things, drinks very brown liquors, and is pretty fly for a light guy. His biggest accomplishment to date coincides with his Blackest accomplishment to date in that he received a phone call from Oprah Winfrey after she read one of his pieces (biggest) but he didn’t answer the phone because the caller ID said “Unknown” (Blackest).
