Culture Spending Holy Week in Hillsdale

How staying at school for the Easter holiday can help you remain grateful for our college community

By Megan Williams

Culture Editor

Until this semester, Hillsdale was never my ideal location to celebrate holidays. With family on the West Coast, I was used to accompanying friends home for different holidays throughout the school year since it wasn’t practical to fly across the country for three days.

Yet when the time rolled around to plan how I would spend Holy Week and Easter weekend this year, Hillsdale seemed like the obvious choice.

Having attended – and loved – the Easter Vigil at St. Anthony’s Church in Hillsdale my sophomore year, I wanted to spend my last Holy Week relaxing and soaking up the sun with friends in Hillsdale, cherishing my last few moments before graduation.

I assembled a small group of other members of my sorority who were also staying in town, and we decided to cook an Easter feast– complete with mimosas and The Masters playing in the background.

The preparation began on Friday morning, before the Good Friday afternoon service at St. Anthony’s Catholic Church. My fiancé and I researched focaccia recipes to try our hands at breadmaking. After creating a grocery list, we left my off-campus house to get a seat at the church about an hour before the service actually began.

The chapel, as usual, was full at 2:30 p.m. for a 3 p.m. service. Lasting about two hours and 20 minutes, the congregation poured out of the chapel to go find or make dinner after fasting a majority of the day.

Driving over to Kroger, we bought the necessary ingredients for our bread and invited some friends over for dinner.

Heating up the oven and a pan on the stove, we assembled veggie paninis – loaded with tomatoes, olives, spinach, and cheddar cheese – and created a cheese and cracker board with honey-drizzled baked brie resting in the center. With The Masters being delayed due to weather, we turned on “Full Swing,” a Netflix golf docu-series, to keep us in the spring golf mood.

We woke up to a sunny spring morning on Saturday and headed over to Rough Draft to get some homework done.

We were pleasantly surprised by how many people stayed in Hillsdale for the holiday – whether it was to support friends getting confirmed or to try and catch up on school work – the area surrounding campus was still very lively. We went home and decided to whip together the focaccia bread recipe, mixing in sundried tomatoes, garlic, and a bit of rosemary to flavor the dough, and put it in the fridge to rise. the practice of welcoming in Easter surrounded by friends, classmates, and professors. The three-hour service has never felt laborious or boring, rather, it perfectly situates Jesus’ death and resurrection within the whole story of God’s love for mankind. had probably made too much food for the six people in attendance, but the flavors, and leftovers, made all the work worth it. Spending the rest of the night playing card games and drinking mimosas, we all agreed that while a Hillsdale Easter may not be the most glamorous, it’s an incredible way to remind ourselves how thankful we are for our college community.

Anthony’s two hours before the service began to get seats for us and some friends.

We made sure to bring a few books– an illuminated manuscript of “Psalms” and “Word on Fire: The Gospels”–to help ourselves focus on the service about to take place.

Attending the Easter Vigil also left Sunday open for cooking, socialization, and more golf. Making pancakes from scratch with bacon in the morning, we left the rest of the afternoon to prepare for our dinner.

We took the bread dough out of the fridge, proofed it, and placed it in the oven to bake. In the meantime, we invited some friends over to drink beer and watch The Masters while I continued to cook brussel sprouts in the kitchen.

Making a quick dinner before the Easter Vigil, we got dressed in our Sunday best and headed over to St.

First experiencing the Easter Vigil at St. Anthony’s my sophomore year with a Catholic friend, I fell in love with

With the bread and brussel sprouts finishing around the same time, we transported our steaming dishes to our friend’s off-campus home, along with some champagne and orange juice. When we arrived, the chicken was getting pulled out of the oven, looking like something straight out of Better Homes and Garden magazine. We boiled and mashed potatoes for another side and created a delicious gravy out of the juices from the chicken.

Once the spread was laid on the counter, we realized we

Going home allows you to experience the traditions that you grew up creating with your family. Whether it’s Easter baskets, egg hunts, church services, or golf, continuing to participate in those activities is often a comfortable and enjoyable choice. Yet, deciding to stay at school and combine my traditions with those of my friends and the local community helped me grow and prepare to do the same thing after graduation. We spend so much time on campus worrying about papers, exams, and social situations that taking a four-day weekend to actually enjoy our campus should be an opportunity that students welcome.

Sure, Hillsdale may not be students’ first idea when they think of where to spend the holidays, but it is a place where friendship and faith are cultivated, and spending a few days cooking and coming together over a delicious meal definitely outweighed the laborious travel I could have undertaken.