From coastal Carolina’s holiday flotilla to the Piedmont’s storied baseball rivalry between NC State and Wake Forest, Easter traditions abound in the state that has it all.
Yet, few appreciate the importance of honoring and preserving those traditions like Tipper Pressley, a writer and Appalachian folklorist based out of Brasstown, in the state’s southwestern region.
In an area that is about as close to Alabama as it is to Asheville, Pressley has dedicated the past 18 years to archiving the unique customs of mountainfolk and sharing them with an ever-growing audience via her website, Blind Pig and the Acorn, which also has spawned a popular YouTube channel, Celebrating Appalachia.
“I’m, like, ancient when it comes to the bloggers,” Pressley told Carolina Journal about her long journey to influencer status.
An acquaintance of hers first introduced her to the art of blogging back in 2008.
“I thought all blogs were political. But she made handmade soap, and she was a quilter,” Pressley said. “And so, from that blog, I found, of course, that you could blog about anything. And I’d always had a real passion for where I live, my culture, the music, the food, the folklore, all of it — the way we speak.”
She initially began sharing the stories and customs she had grown up with as a hobby to help her break free from a “really bad place,” but she and her husband now are able to make a full-time living off the revenue it generates.
“It’s so wonderful to be blessed like that, to be able to do it, but at the same time to just continually reach that goal of what I started way back in 2008 — that was my endeavor, was to preserve and celebrate,” she said. “You know, it’s just a wonderful way of life, for sure.”
Pressley’s musings on life, including popular posts about food and dialects, draw in not only those who share her heritage, but also those for whom it is entirely foreign and new.
She features monthly Appalachian “vocabulary tests” with words and phrases that are unique to the region.
“Some people that have never heard the words, they find it really interesting, like ‘Really, people really talk like that?’” she said. “And then, to people that are familiar with it, they’re like, ‘Oh, I remember my mama always said that, too.’”
Pressley’s stories might even offer unique insight to those who grew up with similar traditions but different terminology, such as “eating leather britches at your grandma’s house.”
She explained that the term for dried green beans that are rehydrated, cooked with pork, and eaten still in the husk may be different depending on where in Appalachia one grew up.
“Even holler to holler, as we would say, sometimes it varies,” she said, with some people calling them “shucky beans” and others saying “fodder beans.”
But whatever the name, folks could be certain to find some green-bean variation on the table at Eastertime, along with ham, deviled eggs, and, in Pressley’s family, a special coconut cake.
“My mother would fix coconut cake with wonderful icing, but also with the addition of black walnuts, which are native to Appalachia,” she said. “So, black walnuts kind of nest in among the icing and the coconut on the top and in between the layers.”
Beyond the supper table, Pressley has also shared several other unique Easter traditions over the years. In a 2022 video, for example, she recounted two local “legends”: the dogwood petals and fairy crosses.
As a small girl, she grew up hearing that the dogwood petals, which typically are in full bloom this time of year, symbolized Christ’s crucifixion due to the four-leaf pattern they made.
“Whoever showed me, in spring of the year, showed me a dogwood petal and said, ‘Look, this is the cross where Jesus was crucified for our sins and, you know, the little stains of his blood and the crown of thorns in the middle,” she said.
The fairy crosses also were a familiar sight growing up — although it wasn’t until much later that she understood their spiritual symbolism.
“My daddy drove an oil truck, and I remember one time somebody along his route had sent him home with some Indian artifacts they had found, and among them was a little fairy cross,” she said.
As Pressley recounted in a blog post last November, her research on the subject led her to an article by Appalachian writer John Parris, a longtime columnist for the Asheville–Citizen Times, who recounted an old Indian tale about sprite-like creatures who inhabited the mountains long ago.
“He told the wonderful story of the Cherokee and of the little people crying when they heard the news that Christ had been crucified, and their tears turned the rocks into crosses,” Pressley said.
Another story that Pressley included in a blog post of readers’ Easter memories came from a more recent era. According to fellow folklorist Jim Casada, boys in the region used to have egg fights with hard-boiled Easter eggs.
“Of course there was always some sneaky country boy who had access to guinea eggs and snuck one of them in amongst his dyed chicken eggs,” Casada recalled. “A guinea egg is as hard as the fowl which produce them are loud.”
Yet, for all the sights, sounds, tastes and smells of the season, the Easter traditions all boiled down to one key element: church.
“Easter in Appalachia is sunrise services, cantatas and long walks through dark hollers to bright high ridges,” Pressley waxed poetic in a 2016 post. “… It’s shouts of Hallelujah and Amen mostly on the inside, but with some escaping our lips.”