In theory, I would love to celebrate Easter at the level of Christmas. When you think about it in terms of the story, Christmas is the "enter stage left" of the Messiah, but Easter is when the enemy is vanquished. And isn't the glorious victory worth a big party? Yes.
In reality, Easter for us is smack dab in the middle of "birthday season" - 4 kid birthdays in 3 months - so it tends to sneak up on me and get a bit overlooked and hastily slapped together on a small budget.
This year may not be much different, but we've progressed over the last 5 years in our celebration, and Lord willing in 5 years we'll be that much better at it. Practice makes perfect, or closer to it, and practice at celebration and rejoicing is no different!
Maybe someday we'll have a beautiful sit down Easter dinner, host all the neighbor kids for a glorious egg hunt, roast a lamb on a spit on the front lawn, surprise the kids with big gifts, and generally party it up big time. I think a chocolate fountain would be the ideal here. You can't go wrong with chocolate. And maybe a pinata.
But this year - like most - I'm trying to make it meaningful and special without having a ton of time or money to put into it. Here are a few of the ideas and links that I've had rolling around in my head.
Resurrection rolls
Here's a super simple recipe using premade crescent rolls. I'd rather do from scratch, but we'll see what I have time for with a birthday two days before! Basic idea - a marshmallow in the roll. Bake it, and behold the empty roll. Cheesy? A tiny bit. But it's a sweet treat to do with your kids that can spark discussion and retelling the story to the littler kiddos.
Egg hunt
This can totally be low effort. I like to buy a big bag of candy and put a few in each of a big package of plastic colored eggs. For those with multiple kids of differing ages and abilities, a tip - count the number of each color and keep them fairly even. Then, tell them to only gather their assigned color to start with, until they find however many there are, and then have a color that anyone can collect after they find their own. . Other ideas to put inside the eggs - coins, yogurt covered raisins, gumballs, chocolate covered almonds - whatever will fit!
Egg painting
My artistic husband and kids LOVE this. One year, I bought a big pack of Sharpie markers and we used those instead. Lower mess and could be used to create amazingly complex designs! This year I'm eyeing kits like this or this.
New outfits
I don't know where the Easter dress expectation came from, and I certainly didn't get a new Easter dress every year as a kid, but I always think it's so fun if I can snag a pretty new spring dress for my girls for Easter. It makes for a nice Sunday picture and it usually is needed anyway for the new season!
Gifts
We do a small basket for each child usually. I'd love to shake that up some years and do a big group gift. Generally a small chocolate bunny, item of clothing, and a few small trinkets go into it.
Sweet books to tuck into little one's baskets would be Baby Wren and the Great Gift or Bunny's First Spring.
What are your Easter traditions? Let me know in the comments. I'd love to build more every year to really have it be a rich holiday to celebrate!
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