A couple of years ago I was walking through the store just after Valentine’s Day and noticed all of the Easter Decorations.  You know plastic eggs, green grass, baskets and tons of candy.  My kids were all excited, “Oh, can we get some Easter stuff? Can we?”  Just looking at all of the stuff made me really mad.  “This isn’t Easter stuff?”  I know this is all fun and I did it when I was a kid, but this is not why we celebrate Easter.  Do you know why we celebrate Easter? It’s not about a bunny that brings eggs and hides them; I’m so confused by that concept anyway.  In that moment I boycotted all of that Easter stuff, not forever, just for a little while.  I decided to find a way to teach my children about the true meaning of Easter and if it were possible to incorporate both – the stuff that most of the world thinks of as Easter stuff and the religious meaning of Easter.

What it has evolved to is this:

On the first day of spring or Spring Equinox we celebrate spring by coloring eggs, hiding eggs, making cookies, giving gifts of spring to friends, planting seeds and these kinds of things.  This way we do do these things and the kids and I have a lot of fun doing them, but they are not associated with Easter.  After a cold, dark winter, spring is definitely something to celebrate, so we have called it “Spring Celebration.”

It all starts the day before spring, which this year was a Friday.  After school we started right away by boiling our eggs, 4 dozen and making our cookie dough and getting into the freezer to harden for a while. (Sarah’s Sugar Cookies )

Then we placed loose change into the plastic eggs.  (TIP:  Through out the year I have a Tupperware container in the laundry room and anytime I find loose change in a pocket or in the bottom of my purse I put it in there.  This is the change I used for the plastic eggs.)

We colored eggs.  We gave symbols to things so that what we were doing had meaning.

Why eggs?  Well, because they symbolize new birth and at spring time we celebrate the rebirth and new birth of plants and animals and life.

Why do we color them?  With spring come so many colors of life – the leaves, flowers, the sky, and animals we haven’t seen for a while.

This brings about the question of hiding eggs.  We hide them and find them again to remember that everything has a season and even spring hides for a while and then when we find it, it is filled with nice surprises.

Now, you may think this is a little heavy for some of your younger children, but when you do something every year as tradition it becomes a foundation for them to form their life upon.  They build memories and also some of the things that seem so insignificant now have meaning.

And then we made sugar cookies way into the night.

I tell the children, “Tomorrow is spring and everything will start to bloom and even if it is cold outside it will be spring inside.”  I didn’t know if it would be sunny, rainy or snowy in the morning, just prayed for sun.  Last year we had about 6 feet of snow outside.  But when I woke up it was so sunny, I wanted to cry!  Thank you.  It may only be sunny for one day and then rain for weeks.  I better enjoy it today.

I went downstairs and put finishing touches on their buckets; I do sand castle or beach buckets, not baskets, because then I know the children will use them. Or find a used basket or bucket to use. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on them. Baskets are pretty and all but then they just get trashed or unused.  I put seed starters and a little candy in their buckets.

I got some inexpensive fake flowers (or as my youngest likes to call them ‘pretend flowers’) from Joann’s.  I put them all over the house!

I also did a candy tower which looks absolutely awesome, I think!

I hid the real eggs inside…

and plastic eggs outside and put more flowers outside.

The kids came downstairs and they were really excited!  They noticed the flowers and yes, we had candy for breakfast…breakfast snack that is.

First they looked for eggs inside.  Then we went outside to find eggs.  They loved seeing the flowers outside!  Finding eggs is always fun.   It always takes them a few seconds to find the eggs where it seems like it took me an hour to hide them.

Then while they looked through their plastic eggs, I made frosting and we frosted the cookies.  It was super fun!

In our home we celebrate Easter as the day of resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.  We start our celebration the Sunday before Easter Sunday, on Palm Sunday when Jesus was welcomed back into Jerusalem.  We celebrate Easter all week long.  We sing songs, read scripture, talk about the parables He taught, eat new foods, and learn of His life, look at maps, learn of Jewish customs, and remember Him.  We remember that He died for us and also on Easter morning He rose from the dead and He lives!  Since we started doing our spring celebration, our Easter has become more focused on the Savior.  It is a really special week.  I know there are a lot of families out there that want to make their holidays more meaningful.  I invite you to think about ways to do this.

I was surprised the first year we tried this we didn’t even color eggs and the kids were fine with it.  And each year they look forward to hearing the stories, singing the songs and learning a little more about Jesus Christ.

I will be posting more about our Easter week and ways you can do this too!  But this week, spring break for us, we may be up skiing, but we are still going to celebrate spring!

Here is the book I have used to help me with our Easter week, you may be interested in it.

A Christ-Centered Easter: Day-by-Day Activities to Celebrate Easter Week