Easter traditions

[Tucek1014]

Ok so I saw a bunch during Christmas about not doing Santa Clause, but have seen nothing about the whole Easter bunny. So my question is to parents who don’t do Santa, do you do the Easter bunny? If not, what do you do to for kids to have fun, but also know the meaning of the season?

 

[Jon_S_1]

Ok so I saw a bunch during Christmas about not doing Santa Clause, but have seen nothing about the whole Easter bunny. So my question is to parents who don’t do Santa, do you do the Easter bunny? If not, what do you do to for kids to have fun, but also know the meaning of the season?

I do both Santa and the Easter Bunny. My kids have no confusion over what the holidays are really about.

So we will do an egg hunt and an Easter basket with goodies. Nothing major.

I am a firm believer in letting kids engage imagination and be kids.

 

[Sunbreak]

Even if you don’t do the Easter bunny, you can still color eggs with the kids. In some churches, especially Polish and other Slavic churches, there is a blessing of the food baskets, which children can help fill with samples of food you will eat. You can go together for the basket blessing at church.

 

[E_7]

Personally, I come from a traditionalist conservative family who lives in the mountains and we never celebrated Easter like most people do with bunnies, eggs and chickens…and, personally, I find it offensive that this custom somewhat has replaced the Resurrection of Christ with a rabbit in people’s life, not necessarily Catholics.

 

[Cariethra]

Here’s a twist… we do Santa but not the Easter bunny. I hide the eggs for an egg hunt (plastic eggs with candy). I give them an Easter themed book and sometimes a little stuffed bunny.

That part only really covered maybe an hour of the day. We read about the resurrection from the children’s bible (and obviously go to church).

 

[maryjk]

I do both Santa and the Easter Bunny. My kids have no confusion over what the holidays are really about.

So we will do an egg hunt and an Easter basket with goodies. Nothing major.

I am a firm believer in letting kids engage imagination and be kids.

Same with our family.

We had the Easter Bunny, Santa, the Tooth Fairy and we even had a Leprechaun.

It didn’t take away from Jesus or God.

It didn’t cause confusion.

 

[TypesAndShadows]

Fun things to do:

Baking
A bit late to start a Simnel cake for this year, but we always had a discussion about whether we would put 11 or 12 marzipan balls around the outside (that is, whether to include Judas).
We always made hot cross buns on Good Friday (they take the whole day to rise, given how cold it is in spring around here), and then finished baking them early Holy Saturday morning and glazed them, to break our fast with a sticky bun breakfast.
Bake Easter biscuits: choose shapes that seem appropriate to you. I bet you could make window biscuits with the window in the shape of a cross.
The old no-bake classic of cereal mixed with melted chocolate. Shredded wheat or similar is best for making convincing ‘nests’, to fill with little chocolate eggs. “How often I have longed to gather you under my wings”, God longing to protect us and gather us as a bird protects and gathers its eggs.

Decorate
Decorate eggs - look up Eastern European techniques like pysanky, and the symbolism people use.
Blow eggs and decorate the shells. String them on ribbon and hang them up. Make them as religiously symbolic as you like: the continuous shell represents eternity/infinity.
Cut some flowers and/or blossoming branches, put them in a vase, decorate with whatever decorations you can think up. Maybe there should be some thorns? Maybe a palm cross?

Make an Easter garden. Get a tray or plate, dig up some moss or a piece of turf from outside, maybe lay a bit of soil, make a calvary hill? Plant some small flowers or tiny plants from outside? Lash some sticks together to make crosses? Could you even make a little empty tomb?

Have an egg hunt, whether or not you jokingly claim the Easter Bunny hides the eggs. Why not? Especially if you decorated symbolic eggs earlier.

Sing some Easter hymns. Can you manage two parts together? Maybe try “Jubilate Deo” as a round, if you know that one, or “Rejoice in the Lord always”.

 

[maryjk]

Fun things to do:
Make an Easter garden. Get a tray or plate, dig up some moss or a piece of turf from outside, maybe lay a bit of soil, make a calvary hill? Plant some small flowers or tiny plants from outside? Lash some sticks together to make crosses? Could you even make a little empty tomb?

It is too late now, but for a wonderful Easter garden can be started during Lent, use a plastic disposable plant tray. You know the ones that go under a plant and you can buy at any super store. They are very cheap.

Fill it, almost to the top with potting soil or dirt. Then cover with grass seed. The grass will grow during Lent. Keep it watered.

Saturday night or Easter morning, you can add colored eggs, flowers, crosses or whatever. You can put half a plastic cup in the dirt to create a hill/cave for a tomb. Do that before you plant the grass.

I have to *remember *to do this. It always comes to me, a couple of days before Easter.

 

[AnastasiaRomano]

No Easter Bunny here (or Santa either)… We do color eggs and hunt the colored eggs, without any claims that the Easter bunny hid the eggs. We also give each child a small Easter basket with candy in plastic eggs – and this year, the baskets will have a Bible wordsearch book too.

On a side note, when I was buying Easter candy at the store this week, I saw a lot of ridiculously large pre-wrapped Easter baskets with all sorts of gifts inside. (For example, one had a full-size basketball, book about basketball, basketball socks, plus tons of candy.) Is this a new thing? Or have I just missed noticing this trend before now?

 

[marymary1975]

Again I am not from the United States so I had no idea about what an “easter bunny” was until about three years ago. In my country we call it Sunday of resurrection and we go to the Saturday of Glory mass at 10pm and people after the mass shut the lights off and remain in vigil with candles until 12 pm. At 12 lights go on and pretty much people celebrate Jesus’ resurrection . there are also processions during Sunday and masses and all kinds of church activities so you pretty much spend it at the church the whole day. When I first came to the US I found the holy week unbearable here so I started traveling back for holy week. My daughter in consequence had no idea what Easter (as i would call it resurrection sunday) or an Easter bunny was and at least for six years her “Easters” were Hispanic style, at the church most of the day.

When my daughter started school was when we first heard of “easter” and we had no idea what it was …in fact until today I have trouble understanding the concept but yes about three years ago (and thanks to the movie the guardians) we figure out the whole easter thing and now while my daughter knows there is no Easter Bunny, we join friends and family in the US on their easter celebration. Our main celebration is still religious but I like the aspect of spending the day with family and the kid have fun etc. However last year we did go back for holy week and this year we ate staying in the US. I think I am going to start doing one year in the US and the following outsideD

 

[Joie_de_Vivre]

Ok so I saw a bunch during Christmas about not doing Santa Clause, but have seen nothing about the whole Easter bunny. So my question is to parents who don’t do Santa, do you do the Easter bunny? If not, what do you do to for kids to have fun, but also know the meaning of the season?

It’s Santa Claus (no “e”).

You could always have Saint Nicholas at Christmas, rather common amongst Catholics.
Of course Saint Nicholas’ feast day is on December 6th.

Fun things to do:

Baking
A bit late to start a Simnel cake for this year, but we always had a discussion about whether we would put 11 or 12 marzipan balls around the outside (that is, whether to include Judas).
We always made hot cross buns on Good Friday (they take the whole day to rise, given how cold it is in spring around here), and then finished baking them early Holy Saturday morning and glazed them, to break our fast with a sticky bun breakfast.
Bake Easter biscuits: choose shapes that seem appropriate to you. I bet you could make window biscuits with the window in the shape of a cross.
The old no-bake classic of cereal mixed with melted chocolate. Shredded wheat or similar is best for making convincing ‘nests’, to fill with little chocolate eggs. “How often I have longed to gather you under my wings”, God longing to protect us and gather us as a bird protects and gathers its eggs.

Decorate
Decorate eggs - look up Eastern European techniques like pysanky, and the symbolism people use.
Blow eggs and decorate the shells. String them on ribbon and hang them up. Make them as religiously symbolic as you like: the continuous shell represents eternity/infinity.
Cut some flowers and/or blossoming branches, put them in a vase, decorate with whatever decorations you can think up. Maybe there should be some thorns? Maybe a palm cross?

Make an Easter garden. Get a tray or plate, dig up some moss or a piece of turf from outside, maybe lay a bit of soil, make a calvary hill? Plant some small flowers or tiny plants from outside? Lash some sticks together to make crosses? Could you even make a little empty tomb?

Have an egg hunt, whether or not you jokingly claim the Easter Bunny hides the eggs. Why not? Especially if you decorated symbolic eggs earlier.

Sing some Easter hymns. Can you manage two parts together? Maybe try “Jubilate Deo” as a round, if you know that one, or “Rejoice in the Lord always”.

You could have a 12th for Paul

 

[TEPO]

St. Nick always beats the Easter bunny, there is really no comparison. We tell our kids that the Easter bunny is pretend from the moment they are capable of understanding words, which is about 2.