traditions that Make Easter Special

A while back a blog reader wrote asking about traditions that make Easter special in our family. She mentioned she noticed we have a lot of traditions going on during holidays, and asked about our Easter ones.

This resonated with me because I’ve asked the same question. Over and over. What are we doing with this most sacred holiday to make it special. And also to make it fun. Holidays should be fun after all, right? And the best part of holidays as far as I’m concerned?

The bonding and connectedness they can provide.

Traditions create magic

This is where traditions come in. Oh how magical traditions can be to connect those we love!

If you haven’t started any traditions yet, never fear! It’s NEVER too late. But if you stop and think about it, you may have traditions you don’t even realize are traditions at this point. It could be as simple as a breakfast you like to make or something you say, or a decoration you put out.

The little things have power to become the big things.

A Disclaimer

And a disclaimer…sometimes even the “little things” don’t happen very well around here. Life has a tendency to get in the way. There have been years when I realize in a panic that Easter is in three days and I haven’t done a thing! But that’s what’s so awesome about traditions. Even if you’re not prepared, most of the time they happen. Because your kids have a twinkle in their eyes and help keep them going.

I hope that as I share ideas they will spur some things that might work for you and your family.

Traditions to make Easter more spiritual

Let’s start with what we do to make Easter more spiritual.

What we do to remember that really, Jesus is in the center of it all.

Because to me it’s the most joyous holiday because of all that spirituality. I want so much to make the spiritual part of Easter even more revered than all that fluff stuff that we love so much. How incredibly grateful I am for Christ and His life, his ultimate gift to us. And how I yearn for my children to feel the same reverence for this day.

Blog readers have shared some wonderful ideas in the comments of another Easter tradition post I did, so check those out.  But here are some of the spiritual traditions we do in our family:

• Holy Week

  Oh I love celebrating Holy Week. We go through the events of that last week of Christ’s life and discuss them. There are SO MANY ideas in this post leading up to Easter, including things like “resurrection rolls” and “Easter Story Cookies” and a favorite Easter book I’ve read a couple times to get my own mind ready to celebrate the resurrection. That post also includes links to all the things our church puts out about Holy Week, and two of my sisters’ guides that are phenomenal so be sure to check all those out if you’re looking for ideas. Here’s our year we did the “Stations of the Cross” my sister set up:

  It was a pretty special way to think about that Holy Week!

• Holy Week Events cardsThese little laminated yellow cards don’t look like much, but they have helped plant all those Holy Week events in our hearts for years.

  

• Church Videos

  Oh man, our church has created some pretty incredible short videos that have had such an impact on our understanding of the spiritual significance of Easter. I cry every single year when we watch them. This one is my favorite I think.

  

• Easter scriptures before Easter Bunny on Easter

  I know some families do a Saturday “Easter Bunny Celebration” so that they can concentrate on the true meaning of Easter on Sunday and I love that. For some reason that idea hasn’t made it’s way into our Easter celebrations. But we do work to take some time to concentrate on the Easter story before all the Easter basket hoopla on Easter morning.

Traditions to make Easter fun

Easter Egg Painting

For years our top Easter activity has been painting Easter eggs.Not just the dip-your-egg-in-dye and watch it color.

No, I’m talking paints and paintbrushes strewn across the counter, looking up all kinds of ideas, trying to be extra creative. 
There’s nothing like sitting around your counter together working on something like this to get the good talking going. And I love it.

Strings to lead to Easter baskets

On Easter morning, the Easter Bunny leaves a string at the end of each childs’ bed. They follow that string all over the whole house and find their Easter basket at the end.
This happens no matter where we are, including one Easter when we were staying at my parent’s condo in Utah:

Those strings weave their way through the whole house, in and out of the garage, sometimes through cars, through closets. One year Max’s string led to the swimming pool where the Easter bunny had left his basket in a plastic bag.

I personally think it’s funny that kids get so darn excited about a piece of string. Especially since our Easter baskets aren’t really much to write home about. But without fail, those pesky strings that we have to contort our bodies to get through before going to bed the night before lead to pure delight in the morning.

Easter Egg Hunt

Of course we have a traditional Easter egg hunt after the string hoopla.

Usually there is a dollar or so in a few of the plastic eggs which makes everyone ecstatic as well.

Grace looks like she is pretty miffed she didn’t get that dollar up there, right? Ha!

We’ve mixed things up on our Easter egg hunts a little bit some years. Here are some variations:

• Each kid could only find the one color assigned to them.
• The kids did a really difficult egg hunt for the parents. This was when Jonah and Aja lived with us and those kids hid the eggs in some TOUGH spots I tell you!
• One year Dave and I put different amounts of money in four different color Easter eggs (when only four kids were home). One egg had $2, one $5, one $10, one $20. Then we hid them in pretty tough spots. We had the girls each randomly pick one paper correlated with the color of the eggs. For example, Lucy got purple, Grace got pink, etc.). Then they went searching for the eggs. They could only find their own color. If they found someone else’s they had to slyly leave it there and let them find it themselves. You get whatever money happens to be in the egg the color you chose.

Kind of fun to have some variation on those hunts.

Gathering with Family

Oh I love how Easter brings us together. We’ve gathered with cousins on Easter from the time they were little:

…to the times they were big:

There is so much goodness that comes when cousins and siblings get to bond.

Eggs Benedict for Breakfast

Somehow our Christmas morning breakfast tradition has also become our Easter breakfast tradition. I guess that’s what happens when it’s everyone’s favorite.

We love a good eggs Benedict around here, and I finally got around to sharing the recipe.

And all that is fine and good.

I know that it’s fluff stuff.

But there’s something so good about an anticipated family tradition.

Somehow the air changes around us.

It becomes thick and full of love.

There is something about us all gathered together, excitement escalated, that makes our hearts swell up to the size of giant watermelons.

Happy lead-up-to-Easter, everyone!