Resurrection Day traditions

Some ideas for celebrating that HE IS RISEN!!

Music-to-Wake-the-Family-By

"Christ The Lord Is Risen Today" -- modern version and traditional version

"The Easter Song" by Glad A Capella group

"Beautiful Rescuer" -- by David Walker (thanks, Donna H.!)


Symbolic "Sweets"

1. Easter Story Cookies:  I have loved going through the process of making these cookies with my kids (and nieces and nephews), as each step has something meaningful attached.  The actual cookies themselves were less than impressive, though.  :)  (Maybe we did it wrong?  Meringue is a tricky thing!)

2. Resurrection Rolls:  These are easy, tasty, and have a nice "wow" factor for kids!

3. Empty Tomb Cake:  This could be made in a variety of ways, of course.  It's nice to see an Easter dessert that's not all about bunnies and chicks once in awhile!


Afternoon Activities

If you want to give the kids something to do while you're preparing dinner (or resting after preparing dinner!), here are a few ideas:

1. Egg hunt:  If you haven't already done a neighborhood egg hunt, now might be a good time for whoever is around.  Using "Resurrection Eggs" makes it especially meaningful and useful for teaching.

2. Lego activity:  Tell the kids to make something like this!

3. Coloring pages:  There are some good ones on this site.

6 Holy Week Traditions (other than coloring eggs)

Coloring eggs is nice and all, but there is so much more that you can do on this most Holy of weeks!  Such as...


1. Light candles.  My friend Jamie shared this with us recently:

Thought I would share our Easter tradition. I read it in a book by Noel Piper years ago and I love it. The boys even like it.  Tonight (Palm Sunday) we will light all six candles and read about Jesus's triumphal entry. Each night this week, we will light one less candle and read more if the passion week story until Friday night when we will light only one candle and read of Christ's death and blow out the last candle. Saturday, we don't light any candles or read. BUT Sunday, we light them all and read of Christ's resurrection!


2. Read a short reflection each night from a devotional book.  Our favorite this year is this one by John Piper -- and it's a FREE download.  



3. Have a foot-washing ceremony with your family or friends



4. Celebrate a Christian Passover/Seder: So much symbolism can be found in the Jewish tradition of the Passover meal.  

Here are a few links to inspire you:

A simple description of the meal
Longer description and more background
A 45-minute video by Jews for Jesus
From Ann Voskamp:  "Why A Christian Family May Celebrate Passover"  



5. Consider fasting from something consumeristic -- like electricity, as this family has done. 



6. Make a crown of thorns out of salt dough, play-dough, or even palm branches.




Stay tuned for ideas on how to observe Good Friday soon...

However you choose to mark this week, may it be a time of pondering, remembering, and worship as we draw closer and closer to the Main Event:  Resurrection Day!

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!

How to host an Easter Egg Hunt

Here we are having crossed the half-way point of Lent, perhaps feeling the heaviness -- and length -- of the season.  But the good news is Easter is on its way!  And with it comes all kinds of ways to celebrate.

One tradition we have enjoyed several times through the years has been hosting an Easter Egg Hunt in our yard.  Since this takes a little bit of planning, the time to start thinking about it is right about now.

Who doesn't love finding Easter eggs?  This tradition provides a great opportunity to both reach out to neighbors and to remind children about the True Story behind why we celebrate Easter.  

Plus, it's mostly outside, is a relatively short event, has a clear-cut theme, and therefore is one of the simplest parties you can throw!

Here are the basic things to think about:

1. Passing out invitations.  The two best Saturdays for having the event are obviously the two right before Easter. After choosing your date and time, make up some simple invitations to hand out.  We usually just made quarter-page cards like this one:

(If you want me to send you the template I used, I'd be happy to!)

2. Making the eggs.  We plan for about 12 eggs per person, and fill them with something simple like a small piece of candy, a few stickers, or even a penny.  (The younger ones still think that's pretty cool!)  You may want to color-code the eggs -- certain colors for younger ones to find and other colors for older ones.  Or you can later just divide the yard into sections by age instead.

3. Incorporating the resurrection story.  The Resurrection Eggs, of course, are very helpful for telling the story about Jesus, and you can add these to the mix in a few different ways.  One idea is to put a special star or sticker on the outside of those 12 eggs, and after all the eggs have been found, the children who have the special eggs bring them forward to trade them in for a little prize, or just to be part of the story-telling (which they think is pretty fun).  We've found that it's best to let all the kids discover the contents of their eggs and play a little bit before launching into the more serious story-telling time.

If you do not have a set of Resurrection Eggs, they are easy to make on your own.  (Here's one example.)  One year we even had the kids make a smaller version themselves.  We gave them little slips of paper with verses on them, as well as the objects to include in the eggs.  They took their little sets home with them.  (Again, if anyone wants the verses I used or the print-out, just let me know)

4. Decorations and food.  For some people I know this is the best part of event-planning, and for others, it can just be overwhelming!  The beauty of an Easter Egg Hunt is that it can be as low-key or as elaborate as you want... kids have fun either way.  I tend to be more on the "keep it simple" end of the spectrum, so we usually just serve things like muffins, fruit, pretzels, etc. (Here's an easy but festive idea)  Our decorations are usually kept to a minimum as well -- often balloons (the cheap ones look a lot like eggs when blown up!) and/or garlands or streamers.  Depending on the weather that day, things may get blown away anyway!

If you do want some more creative ideas, though, there are some cute ones here, and here.

5. Other activities.  The actual egg hunt is usually over quite quickly;  when there are prizes and candy involved, kids sure can move fast!  So you may want to plan an additional activity or two, as long as you have everyone gathered.  Depending on the ages of the kids, this could be as simple as giving them coloring sheets, or doing a craft, or it could be organizing some games -- such as Egg Olympics!  There are, of course, a myriad of craft and activity options nicely pictured for you on Pinterest, so I'll let you choose.  :)

Two of Deb's kids and one of mine are in this picture --
 from almost a decade ago!

 5. Bonus ideas:  If your kids are getting a little tired of the whole egg hunt thing, here are some suggestions for other types of events and games to play with eggs.  Some of these could still be done as an outreach activity, including neighbors and friends. 

No matter how you organize it, the main thing is to remember that the event can serve as a powerful tool, teaching kids who may not know the real resurrection story.  What a great opportunity to reach out to our neighbors with the truth!