When I was a kid, my parents made certain decisions about how we celebrated holidays. We celebrated Jesus-only Christmases, Thanksgiving but not Halloween, and Easter without the Easter bunny. Since having children of my own, my husband and I have thought and prayed through these things for ourselves and have come to basically the same conclusions my parents did. We would much rather celebrate the "real meaning" in the sacred holidays than incorporate the secularized version. We don't want to muddy the waters of our children's understanding about God.
Now I want to state up front that I know not everyone comes to the same conclusions we have. In fact, I have come across some pretty compelling arguments for making different choices than we've made. I have no intention of trying to convince or defend our choices here. Many of our good friends celebrate Santa, the Easter bunny, and Halloween. I respect each family's privilege of following the Lord's leading in their own holiday traditions. I just want to share this part of our journey.
Back to my story. I have discovered that we can have the most well-thought-out reasons in the world for deciding to make a break with cultural traditions, but that doesn't make it any easier when we are walking with our children through a store and they see HUGE egg- and bunny-filled baskets and wonder why we don't plan to get them one. Or why we aren't going to have an Easter egg hunt. These things obviously must be an essential part of the Easter celebration. And I feel like a real heel. And I want to hide at home until it all just goes away.
But not really. That's not how I want to live. Nor is it the response we want to teach our children. So instead, last weekend we took the opportunity to sit down as a family and talk about it. Though it might have been easier (for now) to just say no and leave it at that, I know it won't work long-term. Neither is it how my parents modeled leadership to me. So instead, I prayed, asked Salt Racer to join the discussion, and calmed down (as I was getting pretty riled up about it all). As we talked, I started to realize that what our family needs is not merely we-don't-celebrate-Easter-bunnies-and-eggs, but a we-DO-celebrate-Jesus-the-Lamb! The kids and I totally latched on to that. We all started to see that we could have our own special holiday traditions without participating in the ones that are not OK for us.
Since that conversation, I have been so relieved. Now we have a direction to go in celebrating with our children during this season. We gathered up stuffed lambs for our own, personal version of Easter. For our Bible time this week, we walked through some of the events of Jesus' life the week before He laid down His life for us, such as the triumphal entry and washing of the disciples feet, finding that we gained deeper understanding as we did. We had great fun making Easter story cookies that I read about on Stephanie's blog. We went to see a beautiful, moving musical celebrating Jesus at Capital Christian Center. I put together little bowls of candy crosses and flowers for a Resurrection morning surprise. Instead of an Easter egg hunt, we will have a "Find-the-Lamb" hunt where, over the next few days, they will look for a big stuffed lamb hiding with a treat (just as the disciples never knew when or where they would see Jesus after His resurrection). Finally, I hope in the next few weeks to take them to a real sheep farm. And I even have ideas as to how we can expand and deepen these traditions in future years!
So I just wanted to share that for the first time in years, I am really excited about celebrating this week, which I prefer to call Passion Week or Holy Week, though I won't quibble about "Easter" since it's what most people are used to. I am excited to make this start on creating Easter holiday traditions that our children grow up anticipating with joy.
Hallelujah! The Lamb of God is risen! And ... HE'S COMING BACK!!!!!!!
