New and unique and old favorite ways of celebrating Easter in a 21st century fashion that the whole family will enjoy. Menu ideas, baking and candy making, easy decor, attention to the season of spring, visiting shut-ins and more.
Easter, the great feast day meant to celebrate the rising of Jesus Christ from the dead three days after his crucifixion, is the highlight of the Christian calendar. If you are a follower of Christ, you no doubt have many ways of joining your family activities to those of your church in honor of the Resurrection, which offers hope in a life after death for all. Some Catholic families even bring their Easter food to Church for to have it blessed on the Saturday before Easter, to signify their trust in the special feast.
But even those who are not avid Church going Christians, and some Christians who would like to engage their families in more global holiday activities are to be reminded that Easter as a seasonal high point can be celebrated by everyone. It is not an accident that Easter happens a few weeks (depending on the full moon and other natural conditions) into spring. Even the earliest pagans celebrated this season of new life and found in it the hope to carry on fore another year. If warmth returned, buds came again to barren looking trees, and crops grew once more after a cold, dark winter, was it not possible, the ancients told themselves, that humans, too, could be promised new life?
The entire family, from the youngest toddler to the elders, can enjoy seasonal celebrations of spring and the rising of new life, whether they connect it to the rising of Christ or to the reflowering of nature. The suggestions here cover enjoyable and learning activities in the kitchen, as well as games and activities outdoors and beyond the home, as starting points. Families should always build on their own traditions, thus cultivating memories that nurture the young and feed the older.
If the Easter Bunny is still the primary bearer of all good foodstuffs to your house during this holiday, it's time to let the rest of the family in on the fun. Rabbitt may still bring some special treats for the young ones, but if you haven't made chocolates as a family yet, now's the time to try. Simple candy-making molds and recipes are available in candy-making shops, along with the ingredients, and fine quality chocolate in dark, milk or white. Start with simple melted and molded candies if you have young ones involved. Older chcildren and adults may like to advance to truffle making, creating rich chocolatey treats filled with fruits, nuts, caramels, and more. Fudge is an easy starter, and can be made in chocolate, vanilla or the family favorite, peanut butter.
Even the youngest can be creative, frosting Mom's ready molded chocolates with dribs and drabs of icing, or placing chopped nuts or sprinkles across the top of molded chicks and bunnies. Spend a few extra pennies on the fluted pastel papers to hold and separate your chocolate creations, and buy some tins for placing them in. They make wonderful gifts for Grandma or the children next door, and each child in the family may want to create his or her own box of homemade treats for sharing one at a time with others over Easter week.
As your chocolate making develops, you may graduate to higher quality chocolate, which must be ordered online, or from catalogues. Chocolate making, as the recent film Chocolat proclaims, can be a lifegiving and fascinating art.
Probably even more than chocolate is the egg the dominant symbol of Eastertime. As the holder of new life, or at least all the basic ingredients of new life, eggs have held a primary spot in both pagan and Christian lore during the spring of the year. Hard-boiling and decorating Easter eggs is a rich tradition in most families I know. At the simplest level, eggs are boiled and chilled, then dropped into food-coloring solutions to tint them pastel or bright colors.
Several manufacturers provide egg-coloring kits at this time of year, so that even young artists can transfer bright designs on their colored eggs, or use wax to prevent the dye from coloring the whole egg in the first place. This relief type of egg coloring advances to a master's art in the rich tradition of many Eastern European cultures. Polish, Czech and especially Ukrainian Easter eggs are treasures, and because they will be kept for a long time, the contents of raw eggs are often blown out of the egg (with a pin hole pricked into the shell at each end) and then decorated. Some wonderful books on creating egg masterpieces with paints, wax-relief and other methods abound in libraries, for those ready to advance to fine art levels.
Another appropriate activity in the kitchen at this time of year is the making of bread. For thousands of years bread has been symbolic of the risen Christ, especially because Jesus shared himself with his apostles in the form of bread the night before he died. Now, in the Christian tradition, the rising of the yeast in the bread is symbolic of the new life, which the season celebrates. Therefore, many cultures feature Easter breads, made only at this time of year. You might hunt for them in bakeries, but making bread as a family can also be fun. Even eight-or-ten-year-olds can learn to knead and enjoy the process of baking.
Bobka, or Polish Easter bread, is made with white and dark raisins in sweetened dough, and because of its needed several risings, grows to a high and impressive loaf. Italian Pannetone is similar, and the Portuguese recipe for Easter bread features a braided loaf which built-in nests for colored raw Easter eggs. The bread is baked while the eggs cook, and you have an attractive loaf cradling colored, "boiled" eggs""a meal in itself!
Probably the favorite Easter bread where I live is the Italian creation that is actually more of an Easter pie""a rich, biscuity dough surrounding chunks of ham, sautéed sausage, cheeses and chopped boiled eggs. Another variety is meatless, featuring rich, creamy ricotta cheese. When researching for this bread in cookbooks, try the peasant title, "Easter Calzone" or "Easter Ham Pie." It's worth the search and the effort, and most children I know love it. Since many ingredients have to be chopped and prepared, it's a good recipe to prepare as a family.
Planning the Easter menu is another fun activity especially if you can get Grandma, the teens and the little ones involved in the preparation. For some reason, ethnic specialties seem especially appropriate for Easter. One type of sausage only available sat Easter is the Polish Easter kielbasa. It's more mildly flavored than the usual commercial varieties, and in most locales ion the country, can be purchased fresh, as well as smoked. Grilling kielbasa on the outdoor grill combines the best of two worlds.
If you have ethnic traditions of your own, try combining them with Italian Easter pie, Portuguese Sweetbread, and Polish Easter kielbasa then adding something green and fresh from the garden or market, like asparagus, spinach or fresh lettuce salad. Do leave room for suggestions from the peanut gallery, and for the hardboiled eggs and candy treats everyone is counting on.
Is there more to Easter than food? Absolutely. Infact, there's a whole six weeks of preparation for Easter called "Lent," during which traditional Christians "give up" or deny themselves something in order to reach the holy day with a strengthened moral spirit and a deeper hunger for all the goodies that are sure to come. Meaningful ways to mark the season of Lent is to plant seeds with your children, and help them tend their seedlings all through the weeks leading up to Easter.
You can grow a sizable marigold plant, an "impatiens" which can teach so much patience, or even vegetable seedlings like lettuce, herbs and even pumpkins, which can later be transplanted to the garden. While the seed under the soil cracks open and sends out a shoot, the wintry earth is also allowing green sprouts to show up everywhere. Seed starting with young ones can be a wonder-filled experience, with a hundred lessons to teach and learn along the way. You may even want to start a whole windowsill of marigolds, or whatever, in little clay pots, which can then be wrapped in bright foil and given as presents the child's grandparent or godparent at Easter.
Also fun, but less chancy, is forcing bulbs and branches to bloom early. Help the young ones plant hyacinth or daffodil bulbs in a planting mix in January, and by Easter you'll have a thriving assortment of blooming flowers. Or pick pussy willow or forsythia branches about two-three weeks before Easter, put deep cross cuts in the end of each branch, start them in warm water and keep them in a vase or jug until they bloom""then arrange in special festive containers.
Other festive decorations for the season include balloons, filled with the "air" of "new life" and arrange in bright pastel bunches around the house, providing, of course, young ones don't hassle you to play with them. They can be dangerous in young hands. More appropriate play at Easter is with the ubiquitous Easter egg. My favorite Easter activity as a child was making tiny homemade baskets by weaving construction paper together and fastening with a staple gun, then filling with Easter "grass" and a boiled, colored egg for Grandma or the neighbors.
Only second was the Egg Rolling Contest, similar to the one still held annually on the White House lawn. Armed with a stick, and a goal, each child attempts to be the first to roll its egg across a patch of lawn and reach the goal, without damaging the egg""or themselves! The winner gets, of course, a basket of Easter eggs""probably candy ones would be preferred. Equally fun, and a favorite for our children and grandchildren, was the Easter egg hunt. Foil covered chocolate or marshmallow eggs are hidden by one or two creative adults in the outdoors while the children are otherwise distracted indoors. Then the young set is let loose and off on their hunt. In our house we always encouraged the best "finders" to share with those who had a smaller haul. It's in the spirit of the holiday, after all.
Very young children, not up to an egg roll or egg hunt, will enjoy blowing bubbles with some of the small or very large implements available to be used with soap bubble mixtures. The drifting of soap bubbles on the breeze on a fine spring day can be an exhilarating experience. Watching them rise skyward can inspire little stories about rising, and new life, if the parent is comfortable.
Easter stories of all sorts abound in both Christian storybooks and those focusing on the natural world. Check out your library to help get children "in the spirit" of the season as the Easter season progresses.
BY all means, if you are comfortable, make attendance at Church on Easter the highlight of your holiday. The church is never more festively decorated than on Easter morning. Flowers will be lush, the music joyful, and hopefully, the finery impressive. But most important is the chance to teach children about respecting faith traditions, and taking time in our busy days to offer prayers to the great power who makes this glorious spring world possible.
Speaking of the spring world, why not make a trip to a nursery, arboretum or public gardens a feature of your Easter time celebrations? Pointing out new flowers, tropical plants, or even trees just beginning to bud or blossom can be as enjoyable for adults as it is for youngsters. And the teens can always keep their earplugs in""but don't be surprised if even they are impressed!
Finally, many families have extended family with which to visit at Easter time. If you don't or even if you do, take some time out over Easter weekend to visit shut-in neighbors or the elderly confined to nursing homes. What a treat for them to have a family pause for a brief visit and leave with them a special Easter gift""a home-colored Easter Egg, a tiny Plant or homemade piece of candy wrapped individually. DO check with the nursing home about the timing of visits, and be sure the person or persons you'll be visiting may have the food gift you may be bringing.
