Celebrating Easter as a Family
Ideas to help your family observe the Easter season
It’s new for me to think about Easter as a whole season. While Easter Day is central to easter, the liturgical calendar gives Easter a whole 50 days! My goal this year is to help our family sink into Easter as a whole season - rather than just one day - that reorients our whole lives in celebration of Jesus’ life.
Because our kids are really little, I’m focusing on “Jesus is alive” as our central Easter theme (I love Meredith Miller’s counsel on this - see her great podcast episode with Erin Moon - I Kid You Not Tricky Stories: The Resurrection.) We can get bogged down in all the theological particularities of Easter, but our littlest kids can remind us of what is central: we have good news to celebrate!
Here are some things you might want to try as a family:
Celebrate an Easter vigil at home or at church.
The Easter Vigil is a liturgy held as the first official celebration of Jesus’ resurrection beginning after sunset on Holy Saturday and continuing until Easter Sunday. Fire (from a lit fire or from lighting a candle) usually plays a central role in this service. Light a fire/candle and read Psalm 117 or Psalm 118 as a family, as history tells us these psalms were read at the earliest vigils. You might also try listening to We Wonder Pod’s Easter Vigil episode. If you created a Lent prayer corner, change out your purple cloth with a white one, the color of Eastertide (inspired by Lacy Finn Borgo’s Good Dirt: Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide.)
Decorate and light a Paschal candle on Easter.
‘Paschal’ means related to Passover or Easter, and a Paschal candle is a traditional candle associated with Easter celebrations. Decorate a white pillar candle with traditional Paschal candle elements - the cross, the Greek letters alpha and omega, and the year. We tried transferring these to the candle using sharpies, tissue paper, wax paper, and a hair dryer with some success (see here)! You may also want to add five cloves to represent the spices used when burying Jesus to help us remember Jesus’ victory over death. Traditionally churches used barbed wire to represent Jesus’ wounds instead of cloves but…eep. I like cloves better. (inspired by Traci Smith’s Faithful Families)
Plant seeds, herbs, or plants.
This is not only a great ode to spring, but it’s a great way to discuss and participate in resurrection life! We sow seeds as a family together in hopeful expectation for them to rise into plants during the spring/Easter season. You might also make or contribute to compost by adding scraps to a community garden’s compost or start your own! This is a great way to talk about transformation and resurrection.
Try crafts that make something old or broken new again.
Every time you do this, you are practicing resurrection and celebrating life. I love Traci Smith’s ideas from Faithful Families here:
Turn old and broken crayons into new creations by melting them down into mini muffin gins.
Make a bird feeder from a milk jug or paper towel roll.
Use recyclables such as paper egg cartons and plastic lids to create art.
Buy vases from thrift stores and take them home to wash and dry them. Paint them and fill them with springtime flowers.
Make sun catchers.
Use tissue paper to make stained glass-inspired sun catchers and hang them up in a window. When you see the light shine through, thank God for the light that comes after the darkness! You could also use a crystal sun catcher like these ones (inspired by Traci Smith’s Faithful Families.)
Make Carscarones!
Carscarones are a Mexican tradition. With a small knife or needle, make a hole at the base of an egg and let the yoke and white drain out. Rinse the inside of the eggshell and let dry. Dye the shells like normal eggs, then use a funnel to fill them with glitter or confetti. Cover the hole with tissue paper. Take turns cracking these on one another’s heads! Traditionally this happens on Easter Sunday, but trying this later in the Easter season could be a cool way to keep the celebration going (inspired by Living the Seasons by Erica Trisha Campbell.)
On Ascension day, make and fly a kite or hike to a high place.
Emphasizing different narrative points along the Easter/post-Easter story can help kids see Easter as a whole season, and Easter as connected to the story of Jesus. Celebrate the Ascension - the day Jesus ascended to heaven and told his followers they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit - by talking about the story at a high point. This can help your whole family imagine how Jesus and the disciples were feeling or what they were seeing in an entirely new way! (inspired by Living the Seasons by Erica Trisha Campbell.)