Host a Meaningful Easter Party with Your Mom Tribe + Their Kids
Until now, I’ve looked forward to Easter every year. Growing up my family had strong Easter traditions:
- dye eggs,
- go to Good Friday service,
- wear our new Easter attire to the Sunday morning service,
- worship God together side by side,
- enjoy a homemade lunch feast of ham, deviled eggs, and potato casserole, and
- retell the Easter story through Resurrection Eggs®.
Even though my siblings and I are all grown now, our family has held to the long-lived traditions. It’s been even more delightful to dye eggs at my mom’s house next to my little girls or see the shock in my niece’s eyes when she opens plastic eggs to tell the Resurrection story.
But this year, my parents, brother, sister, nieces, and nephews will do all of that without us for the first time. That’s because my husband, two girls, and I moved across the country last July. Exactly 1,150 miles away from the kitchen table that will be set with plaid pink napkins and yummy Easter food. Way too far away from my siblings’ full hearts and nowhere close to the backyard with dyed eggs to hunt on Easter weekend.
Plus, we moved to a cold climate where I’m not even sure it’s warm enough to wear Easter dresses. So I considered skipping Easter this year. There’s definitely pressure to plan something though because I have a 6 and 4 year old who expect to dye eggs, get new dresses, and sing together in our Sunday morning pew.
Obviously I know Easter is about Jesus’s death and resurrection, not about who I celebrate it with. But it still seems hard this year.
So I decided not to celebrate by myself! Because when has anything ever been appropriately celebrated in solitude?
I’m hosting an Easter party and inviting my mom tribe. Maybe you should, too. You’re welcome to steal all of my ideas, as long as it leads to hearty fun and telling the truth to your friends and their kids about why we celebrate.
I’m having the Easter party in my home on Good Friday morning.
Most schools and many businesses give Good Friday as a day off. What a perfect morning to get together for some seasonal fun. A morning gathering also gives leverage to the moms who still have littles that nap in the afternoon. I invited my friends over from 10-11:30 am.
I’m serving good food.
Since it’ll be mid morning when my guests arrive, I’m planning to serve a variety of breakfast food. Options that moms and kids both like! I’ll be making an egg brunch casserole, that my mom will be serving at her house on Easter morning. And since I’m not brave enough to try my grandma’s homemade cinnamon roll recipe, I’ll bake several batches of store-bought, canned cinnamon rolls. Fruit is always a nice breakfast meal addition, and mixed berries add lovely pops of color to my spread. And, of course, coffee. Because tired moms won’t refuse another cup of morning brew.
I’m organizing kid-friendly activities.
The Easter holiday is about much more than colored eggs. But it’s still perfectly fine to dip a dozen or two to keep a longtime tradition alive. Dying eggs is a classic childhood activity too, making it a sure way to create excitement around your party. It’s also a fun way to bond during your time together. I found several boxes of last year’s unsold egg dye at a thrift shop this week. At 50 cents each, I felt fine buying a few boxes. Now I know we have an assortment of colors plus the stickers, glitter, and crayons to decorate eggs with.
Some of my guests will be younger and not ready for the mess of egg dye. I’m going to use the Easter coloring pages in this free download to allow for another optional activity too.
I’m sharing the truth of Easter through Resurrection Eggs.
While we’re all together, I hope that every guest will understand the reason Easter is worth celebrating. I’m carrying on my family’s tradition of using Resurrection Eggs to tell the Easter story. It would be tough for a young audience to sit still while I read through the account in Matthew 27. But I don’t have to! I can tell the story in a way that is interactive and memorable for our kids 6 and under.
With 12 eggs included in the set, I’ll hand one to each child to open. Then I’ll read the corresponding kid-friendly paragraph to explain how the rope, the dice, or other object in their egg relates to the Easter story. So easy peasy that I might let my first grader be the group reader this year.
Alright, now that my Easter party plans are underway I am getting excited. I’m determined to enjoy who I’m with. Sure, it’s not my mom or my sisters and brothers by birth. But I do get to retell the and re-experience the beauty of Easter’s sacrifice this year with sisters in Christ who are making me feel at home in our new community. I think the provision of eternal life settled in the Easter sacrifice plus the provision of good details in a new life we’re making are par for some serious celebrating.
Copyright © 2019 by FamilyLife. All rights reserved.
