Friday, April 15, 2011

Easter Traditions

 Before children, my husband and I had very few holiday traditions that we kept as a couple; we have been pretty happy to celebrate holidays with the sale candy the day after. We don’t do too badly at Christmas, but for things such as Valentines Day, Easter and even birthdays, we have not had a lot of consistency in celebrating them with routine traditions.

I am thinking of this because my husband and I were debating the Easter basket with our son this year, who is not quite 2 years old, and will probably never know he is missing it, but we do want to start having traditions for our kids to look forward to.

This was something my mother did really well, with every holiday there were decorations, food and things to make it special. My parents were not really into commercially celebrating holidays- we did Christmas stockings and Easter baskets, but with the full knowledge that it was credit to my parents, not fictitious characters; it was still fun but we knew it was a game (and to respect our friends who did not know it was a game). I believe this is the same approach we will take with our son; as we teach him about the bible and our faith, we want him to be clear on what truth is and what stories are.

That got a little heavier than I intended especially for my first post.

Back to my main point, which was finding traditions that work for our family.

At Easter my mother would make Ukrainian Easter bread (we are not Ukrainian-but we lived where there are a lot of Mennonites), we would put up and Easter tree with ornaments from Holland (we are not Dutch- I think the ornaments came from friends of my parents). Of course we decorated eggs and went on hunts as most children do.

On a spiritual note our family would usually participate in Lent, go on a Stages of the Cross walk with our church for Good Friday and then to church on Easter Sunday.

As we are at point of making traditions for our family I am curious to know what other people do to celebrate the Easter season.

2 comments:

  1. Easter isn't really a holiday for me, or my husband. The only thing I really love is all the chocolate that's available. Esp those lovely creme eggs. I usually make myself sick eating so many of them. This year I debated about doing an easter egg hunt with my son, but I decided against. The biggest thing we usually do is have a very nice meal together. Sometimes it's just my small family or sometimes it's with my large in law family. My husband and I actually made a point of making traditions for holidays and things that were special to us before we had children. So now we just include our son in what we do. :)

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  2. When Andrew was your guy's age we just had an easter egg "hunt" with the eggs mostly in plain sight. In the last few years we have started doing a treasure hunt, where they start with a picture clue, and when they find the spot the picture leads to there is a treat and another clue. The last clue leads to their baskets and a special toy of some kind. We also go to church Easter Sunday and often have a nice meal.

    This year my friend gave us a special set of Easter eggs that open to show symbols of different parts of the Easter story. We will probably find some way to incorporate that into our Easter this year, too.

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