How to Make An Easter Basket Spiritual

This post comes to us from Jessica Smartt, author of smarttereachday.com.  I always enjoy her perspectives on motherhood and life in general, so am thrilled that she is sharing some of her creativity and wisdom with us on this site today!

Easter baskets...spiritual? Is that a stretch?? Like trying to squeeze Santa in a nativity scene?

Nope, I don't think so!

I'm here to say that you can celebrate the real-ness of Easter with your kiddos, and still let them experience the joy of hunting for, and enjoying their Easter baskets.

How?

Here are a few suggestions:

• It's all in the delivery. If you "hype up" the Easter baskets for weeks, then your kids, too, learn that that's what's important. If you read your Jesus Storybook, and discuss Jesus' death and resurrection, then they understand something different.

• Draw the correlation between hunting for baskets (or eggs!), finding them, being elated, and the women's joy when they discovered Jesus. Now look. I know that can seem like a stretch. I don't think it has to be. We are helping them to pretend, in a small way, what it would be like to search and search, and find something wonderful. When we discuss the Easter baskets, I'll talk about this. When they find them on Easter, I'll say, wow! Can you imagine how excited those women were, when they thought Jesus had died, and they found him and He was ALIVE!!? Isn't that amazing! I'm so glad Jesus was alive.

• Fill it with good stuff. Duh, right? I recently shared 25 Meaningful Easter Basket Ideas. You can browse the list for yourself, but the basic idea is to think like this: How can I fill this basket with things that will LOVE my child, and draw him closer to Jesus? Check out the list, and let me know if you have others!