At our house, we celebrate what Pinterest and mommy-blogs have dubbed Holy Week. We started when Rex was a baby and I realized that we do a ton of stuff for Christmas, but next to nothing for Easter. And I'd argue that Easter is a least a million times more important than Christmas. Easter is the celebration of the single-most pivotal event in eternity (not just in the history of the world, but all of eternity) that enables us to repent and be happy, whereas Christmas is the celebration of a birth of a baby, four months before his actual birthday. Not that Christmas isn't important, but it does steal some of Easter's thunder.
Now, in great detail, so that I remember for future years and can repeat if necessary, here's what we did this week: Actually, a side note before we get started, some days we read from the children's scripture reader, some days we read from the actual New Testament, while some days I just paraphrased the scriptures. Also I didn't take pictures because it's weird to take pictures of people reading scriptures. Oh, look at us feeling the Spirit--wait, do that again so I can take a picture. This week was more about learning than about picture taking.
Day 1: Palm Sunday.
We read the account of Christ's entry to Jerusalem and talked about the significance of palm leaves as explained in the March 1996 Friend. We also watched the #Hallelujah Virtual Choir, which Henry loved and wanted to watch again and again. And which we did watch all week long. Then we cut out palm leaves and wrote things we could to show joy in the gospel. Alice and Rex came up with pray, read scriptures, clean our room without complaining (which they promptly forgot about when I asked them to clean their room that night). Then we hung our palm branch up on our Easter wall along with a picture of Christ entering Jerusalem.
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Day 2: Cleansing the temple.
We talked about Christ going to the temple and telling people not to do bad things in there. Then we watched a virtual tour of the Provo City Center Temple while I explained what each room was for. Then we talked about our family being forever. We hung up a family picture and a picture of the Mt. Timpanogos temple.
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Day 3: Teaching
Christ spent the day teaching in the temple. We actually had the missionaries over for dinner so they shared a message. Then we had sweet bread and honey butter for dessert and talked about Christ being the bread of life and what that meant. After they left, we lit candles one at a time and talked about Christ being the light of the world and what that meant. This second visual was kind of killed by daylight savings. Candles don't do a whole lot when the sun is still up at 8. But the bread was good--gave me heart burn though. We hung up a picture of a shepherd because Christ is the good shepherd and put the candles on the piano.
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Day 4: Nothing
Really. There's no record of what Christ did on Wednesday. We talked about the parable of the talents that Christ taught on the previous day. I told the kids the parable, then we talked about our talents and wrote them on piece of foil I'd cut into the shape of coins (like talents the money, get it? get it?). Rex said he was a good piano player. Then I suggested he was good at making friends, and Greg suggested that he is athletic. Alice said she's a good dancer and singer and that she's good at making bouquets, which is true, just look at the bouquet she picked for me during Pajama School earlier that day. We decided that Henry is good at talking and playing. Greg said he's good at Googling things. He's the best Googler I know. I said I'm good at coming up with activities for children. We hung up our talents that day.
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| Look at all our talents |
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| The bouquet Alice picked for me. Bouquet picking is one of her talents--I helped arrange it but still. |
Day 5: Jerusalem Dinner/Passover
This was probably my favorite day. I've wanted to do a Passover-type dinner but never had the guts to do one before, but this year I did a bit of reading and turns out it isn't that hard. Passover today is a little more complicated than the one Christ celebrated. Christ would have eaten lamb (we put a stuffed lamb on the table because I didn't feel like cooking lamb), unleavened bread (we used pita bread, which isn't actually unleavened), bitter herds (romaine lettuce), and wine (sparkling cider). We also had fish, as that is what Christ probably ate on a day-to-day basis, olives, and hummus. We talked about the symbolism of the Passover and the first Sacrament. Did you know that the wine not only represents the rejoicing of the Israelites fleeing Egypt but also the covenant of the Father to redeem His people? And then Jesus used that wine to institute the Sacrament? What?!? Did you also know that unleavened bread is not only a reminder of the speedy departure of the Israelites but a lack of pride as evidenced by it not being puffed up by yeast. And Christ used unleavened bread at the first Sacrament? Say what?!? Learn something new every day. Then Rex had to run off to baseball practice. We hung up a picture of the Passover from the Old Testament, Christ instituting the Sacrament, and Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane and put the stuffed lamb on the piano.
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Day 6: Trial and Crucifixion
We didn't actually do anything due to the goat trauma described in a previous post. We read from the Children's reader about the trial and crucifixion and hung up a picture of Christ on the cross.
Day 7: In the tomb
This was Saturday. We started the morning with making the Resurrection rolls we were supposed to make Friday night but didn't due to the traumatic goat delivery. To make Resurrection rolls chose a bread dough of your liking and divide into rolls; flatten rolls out; roll a marshmallow in melted butter and then in cinnamon and sugar mixture; wrap the marshmallow in the roll; allow to rise then bake as normal. The marshmallow is Christ's body, the butter is the oil used during burial, and the cinnamon and sugar are the burial spices. We saved them to eat for breakfast Easter morning.
Then we did the Saturday activity. We talked about Christ spending the day teaching and serving others in the spirit world. We then decorated cookies to take the neighbors with a pass along card, just like Jesus did. Rex and Alice made up symbolic meanings for all the types of sprinkles they used, just like we'd been making up symbolic meanings for marshmallows and candles all week. Henry just ate handfuls of sprinkles.
It's so awesome it gets its own post. Also this one is getting long so I'll let you break it up over a few days.
But here is our completed Easter wall and display.
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