Last year during Easter my sister and I were in NYC to see a kickboxing tournament in Chinatown. The fight was on Friday night and then we spent the rest of the weekend wandering about NYC. On the Sunday before we left we were walking around Central Park and stumbled by the Tavern on the Green. They were hosting a clearly private socialite function. All we could see through the gaps between the unicorn shaped bush and 10 foot king-kong bush were brightly colored shapes moving to and fro. Honestly we weren't getting a good view and it looked like fun. So we decided to crash. While the ticket taker was busy corralling some children into the gardens we did a quick sidestep and we were in.
It was like going on safari. But instead of monkeys throwing feces or the unrelenting ferocity of a lion pride, we witnessed a spectacle that I thought merely existed in movies. The socialites were walking caricatures of themselves. A garden full of unbending botoxed faces adorned with furs and feathers. White gloves and miniature Burberry suits adorned the little boys, the girls all trussed up in frills and foofaraw. All around us we heard snippets of the native language:
"Muffy, you simply must tell me . . ."
"We recently had one of those people move next to our cottage in the Hamptons"
"Fauntleroy please don't spit on the help, now come sit beside Mumsie"
To add to this otherworldly atmosphere they were having an Easter hat contest. Clearly the rules of the contest were: make and decorate a hat to celebrate the season. The rules though were thus interpreted as spend a ridiculous amount of money and hire a team of designers to make it look like you have a budding artistic talent. Some hats were so tall and full of bunnies, flowers, boats that they required armature. More than one person hired help to dress in full costume and wear the towering monstrosities. My sister and I discreetly took pictures and notes. And after 15 minutes of wandering among the small crowd we started to get questioning looks and hightailed it when we saw a few men in coat tails and gloves scurrying our way.
How do you celebrate Easter and the end of winter?
