My Life as Annie’s weekly Time Travel Tuesday asks this week:
Share your Easter traditions. Did you have egg hunts every year? A new dress? Was it a spiritual event in your family, or just a fun day?
My family was not a Christian one, but my mother did let me go with her father and sister to the Lutheran church. I remember the different cloths on the pulpit and the sash the pastor wore (I forget the exact names of them) being purple at Easter. I am not in a liturgical type of church now, but I did like that obvious change with the seasons and holidays. I do remember getting a new dress, shiny black patent leather shoes, and an Easter basket. I remember dyeing eggs. I don’t remember if we did egg hunts at home: I do remember attending one somewhere.
And that’s about all I remember of my childhood Easters. 🙂
When our own kids came along, at first I was somewhat militant against any part of the holidays that wasn’t specifically Christian: I wanted to keep the emphasis of Easter on Christ’s death and resurrection. But I have softened over the years. I came to see that all of spring, really, is a picture of the resurrection, of new life. And for young children, when they don’t understand all the spiritual significance, doing little things to make the day special in some way is a good thing, I think. So we began having small Easter baskets with candy and just a few little trinkets like decorated pads and pencils, etc. — I still don’t like the idea of a humongous basket with a dozen toys and cashiers asking the kids, “What’s the Easter Bunny bringing you for Easter?” as if it is another Christmas (not to criticize anyone else who does that: we just prefer to keep that side of Easter simple for our family). I did like the idea of a new outfit: that seemed symbolic of walking in newness of life, of a change of appearance after salvation. Plus when the kids were little they needed new clothes every year anyway. But then they kind of grew out of that and didn’t seem interested. I have all boys, and they all went through a phase of only wearing one dress shirt every Sunday no matter how many shirts they had in the closet. So the new outfits for them for Easter kind of fell by the wayside. I often will still get a new dress for myself, but I don’t stress about it and don’t ‘”have” to have one.
We never did do the Easter Bunny, but one year my husband hid money in plastic eggs and hid them around the yard for the boys, and that has become a tradition. We never dyed or decorated eggs, and that makes me a little sad, but no one liked hard-cooked eggs, so there is really no reason to. I like an egg salad sandwich or deviled eggs every now and then, but I don’t want to personally eat everyone’s eggs. 🙂
Another thing that has become a tradition is making Resurrection Rolls, which is basically bread dough wrapped around a marshmallow: the marshmallow melts into the bread, leaving it with a sweet taste and a hollow place which looks sort of like the empty tomb.
The recipe for that and some other Easter treats are here.
Another big part of our Easter is that our church usually has some special things going on, usually a choir cantata Easter Sunday evening.
Stray Thoughts 
