This Easter, Dressing Up Matters to Me More than Ever

My husband and I have been staying at my in-laws for weeks now and, besides the fact that we can’t run out to the store at the drop of a hat or have the extended family join us, it’s oddly felt like one very long extended holiday. We never spend this much time together in one home with the exception of the long Thanksgiving weekend.

We head to our separate corners during the day to sit at our laptops and work remotely but come 5 o’clock or so, each and every night, the mood shifts. First come the cocktails we shake, followed by a flurry of activity in the kitchen to prepare dinner for six. Then we all gather around the dining room table, since it’s the only one that fits us all, to enjoy a true family dinner complete with wine and dim background music.

In all honesty, it’s lovely — but as my mother-in-law pointed out last night while we were deep into our new routine, it has started to feel a bit like the movie Groundhog Day. And, since we won’t be adding any family members to the Easter table this year, we’ve been questioning just how different it will be from any of our other nights of late. That’s why we made a small promise to each other: We’re dressing up on Easter.

With the way the world is right now, yoga pants and sweatshirts have become de rigueur everyday. I’ve worked from home for years and always managed to shower, put jeans on, and blow-dry my hair in order to feel put together even though I am not in an office. These day, however, I just can’t. My motivation is lost and no one else is really doing it around me, so why bother? I’ve learned how to go from pajamas to some sort of legging situation back to pajamas seamlessly.

To make Easter feel special among the chaos of our current state, we’re all putting real outfits on. We’re not dressing up to the nines but we’ve all agreed to at least put jeans on and a half-decent top. Heck, I might even swipe a little lipstick on. Perhaps it seems silly, but it’s how we’re making the holiday feel like, well, a holiday, when days are blurring and they’re as weird as they’ve ever been. We’ll make a nice dinner, put that dim music on and open a couple of bottles of wine, and be grateful we’re all together — safe, healthy, and just for one night, yoga pant-free.