Easter

It has been a pretty eventful week, not as eventful as this week 2000ish years ago - but a busy week. I love Easter and really want my kids to love it too. Easter means spring time, an end to the cold and darkness of winter and the promise of bright sunshine, warm days, beautiful flowers and long evenings. The bunnies and eggs part of Easter is fun, I love the pastel colors the flowers and definitely the chocolate but honestly I love the reminder of what Christ did for us. The atonement and its promise of eternal life is perhaps the greatest treasure in my life, one definitely worth remembering.

The sacred part of Easter seems to be overlooked a little more each year. What is not taught or celebrated is often forgotten, I am afraid that is what is happening to Easter. There just isn't that much focus on Christ, even at church. I was a bit bugged that my husband had to go to ward welfare on Easter Morning. It would seem to me that meetings could be cancelled or postponed on a morning such as this. They cancelled meetings the week of Thanksgiving, Christmas and Mothers Day. I guess the truth is Easter just isn't seen as that important of a holiday. But I keep remembering that little phrase, "without Easter there would be no Christmas". But how to bring Easter up to the same level as Christmas in the eyes of my children is beyond me.

I think the Jewish people have gotten the right idea with their passover celebration. Of course they were commanded in the book of Exodus to do it, to teach their children what happened on the night of exodus. But faithful Jews have done it now for centuries. They believe the more they talk about the exodus the more praiseworthy they are. So talk about it they do. With elaborate rituals and traditions, questions, songs, stories and I imagine a great deal of fun. My guess is the children of faithful Jewish families who really celebrate the Passover not only know what happened that night but also appreciate the blessings it has brought them. I hate to compare that to my attempt at teaching my children about Easter because I am afraid I am failing. My children know the Easter bunny comes, they know they get to dye eggs eat candy and wear a new dress to church, I think they may even know that Christ died and was resurrected. But I don't think they know how important that is. I need to find a way to get that across.

I am embarrassed to admit that I am not doing much in the way of creating good teaching moment traditions. Instead of elaborate dinners filled with meaning I checked out the some movies from the library to teach my kids about the exodus. I checked out Charlton Heston's "10 commandments", the "Prince of Egypt" and a bible story called "Moses". I told the kids that one of their chores for the day was to learn about how the Israelites were freed. I let them choose one movie and watch it for their afternoon chores. They looked at each movie, choose the shortest one, watched it and got on with their day. That's definitely not going to win me any "mother of the year" awards. I guess I'll have to try a bit harder.

I decided it was time to step up my parental obligations a bit and really try to communicate to them the significance of Easter, to instill in them a reverence for what they were really given. On Monday for Family Home Evening we had a lesson on the last week of Christs life. We went through each day and talked about what happened and read scriptures of some of the events. For the most part my children were interested and paying attention. This may have had something to do with bribery. We began the lesson by taking a quiz. It was a pretest so they didn't know many of the answers but I told them every question would be answered during the lesson. I promised a candy bar to anyone who got all the answers right. They wanted the chocolate so they listened and filled out their tests. It was a good experience.

So Thursday rolled around and my oldest son very offhandedly remarked at breakfast, "so this is the day Jesus ate the passover dinner and went to that garden" I decided to jump on that little spark of interest. I told him we would celebrate to night by having a little bit of a Passover dinner. Now we are not Jewish and I have never been to a Seder so I really had no idea what it is all about. So I googled it and read about it for hours. I still really have no idea what really happens but I put together a little dinner for my kids. We had bitter herbs to remind us of the bitterness of slavery. We dipped vegetables in salt water to remind us of the many tears shed. We looked at a roasted egg, (no one could bring themselves to eat it). We ate charoset, which was pretty good. We drank 4 glasses of sparkling grape juice-while reclined, and dipped our finger in it for each of the 10 plagues. The children asked the questions and we told the story of the passover. We hid the dessert and held our plate of food over our head. It was quite interesting.

The whole passover thing is quite intriguing to me. The Seder is steeped in tradition and ritual all meant to teach the children the miracle of the exodus. (A much more effective lesson plan than my movie approach.) I wonder how anyone growing up with something like that couldn't help but feel pride and admiration and cherish their heritage. I guess that is how I want my children to feel about the traditions we have in our home. I don't want to be merely frivolous, fun or tasty, I want the to hold meaning. I want them to be powerful reminders of their heritage and the beliefs we hold sacred. I want them to evoke feelings of pride, unity and love. I want the traditions we practice to remind them of who they are and who they want to become.

I'm not thinking that the Easter Bunny is doing all of that for us. I don't really have anything against the rabbit. He's cute, fun and brings some pretty tasty treats. What's not to love about that. The same could be said for Santa. I do think there is a place for such traditions. Having fun memories fosters unity and love. Having fun as a family is really important to me. I whole heartily agree with Stephen Covey's thoughts on the matter.

"We want our children to get more fun and satisfaction from the family than from the
school or from their peers or from any other outside influence. Basically, we don’t want
them to have anything to rebel against; we want the family culture to be fun and
affirming and to have many opportunities associated with it."

I do want my kids to have so much fun at home with their family they don't need to go look elsewhere for it. So we try do fun things. I bought 5 dozen eggs and hard boiled them. It is a bit hard for me to do this since we all think hard boiled eggs are disgusting. They go straight in the trash after they have been hidden and found a sufficient amount of times. We stripped everyone down and let them dye the eggs, the table and their bodies. They laughed and joked and had a wonderful time. The Easter bunny came and hid the eggs all over the basement. This year he also hid the Easter baskets. That was a first. The kids were very concerned when they got up Saturday morning and didn't see their baskets in the usually spot. They were convinced that they hadn't gone to bed early enough so the Easter Bunny skipped us. They were quite sad. But then Rachel went to look out the window and saw her basket behind the curtains. Then the hunt was on. The kids ransacked the house finally discovering a basket in the shower, closet, oven and cupboards. They feasted on marshmallow bunnies and chocolate eggs until it was time for the ward Primary party where they color, cut and ate. The whole day was basically a sugar fest. The Easter Bunny did give us a fun day.

But there is more to life than fun. I want the fun to have some meaning behind it. And I don't think I am doing to well at that. I wanted Easter Sunday to be special. I wanted the kids to feel like it was special day. But I was kind of at a loss for how to make that happen. So I started out by making an extra special breakfast. Now it was extra special because it is not something we usually have, not because everyone loves it. In fact none of the kids even tried it. I knew they wouldn't. I debated having something they enjoy like fruit loops or spider man cereal or some other sugar covered corn product sold in a colorful package. My kids would have loved that, but I wouldn't have felt like a terrible slacker of a mother. So I decided to make cinnamon rolls and breakfast casserole. Because in my mind that is what a good mother makes. It took several hours. It was just after 1:00 am when I crawled into bed after frosting the rolls and putting them on my set table. I had drug out the tablecloth, china, and goblets and did my best to set the table a bit nicer than the stack of bowls and spoons I usually throw down.

Just as I predicted when I got my family up Sunday morning several requested cheerios. My wonderful husband realized how much work I had gone to and even put the cereal bowl back he had gotten out and choked down some breakfast casserole. He later admitted that after the first couple bites he started to like it. The cinnamon rolls were a go - they have enough sugar to qualify as acceptable by my kids. So I was marginally happy with breakfast. It went just as I expected but not as well as I hoped.

We then all dressed in our best Sunday clothes. I pulled out our "Kevin and Tess" wedding clothes and ironed and mended them so we could all coordinate. The last time my girls wore their dresses they had pulled some of the tulle layer off. So I mended it. Which for me is quite an accomplishment. Anyway we were all dressed and ready to go, I looked at Rachel and she looked a little green. I asked her if she was ok - she stared at me. I asked her if her tummy hurt. She kept staring. I asked her if she needed to throw up. She nodded. I got her a bowl and she stared into it for a few minutes but nothing came up. She finally looked up and said she was all better. I was hoping it was just too much chocolate but fearing it was the stomach flu our neighbor had. We all went to church anyway. We got there walked in and sat down just as the Bishop started in on the announcements. Not even a whole minute had passed and Rachel started heaving, I immediately turned her against me as she started throwing up. I caught all the throw up on my chest and lap. I stood up as inconspicuously as I could and carried her out. We went home and I put her to bed and started some laundry. So much for the spiritual reminder of the sacredness of the day that I was longing for. My loving husband came home so I could teach my primary class. I hadn't expected him too since I knew he really wanted to go to church. I had told my oldest son he could skip sharing time and watch my baby. He was ecstatic. He hates to sing. So needless to say he was pretty disappointed when he had to stay at church.

All 9 of my primary kids had obviously been visited by the Easter Bunny who undoubtedly was very kind to them. All the little girls had new dresses on that they couldn't seem to keep down where they belong. It may have been the sugar pumping through their veins that was forcing their legs and arms to fidget out of control. I saw more pairs of panties then I cared to, I was constantly reminding them to sit like a lady and keep their skirts down. I got a sentence in here and there in the midst of their chatter and commotion. We finally got through the lesson. Chaotic would be an understatement.

And that is how our Easter experience has been thus far. Kevin and Tess will be coming to dinner later this evening. I am planning on a bit of scripture reading. We shall see if we can manage to salvage a scrap of spirituality out of all the chaos. The kids have done nothing but cry and fight and beg to play the wii since we have been home from church. Something has got to give and I am afraid it is going to be my sanity. So consider this a plea for help. I need a way to teach my kids about Easter in a way that will be fun and meaningful. I need to find some new traditions that highlight Christ and the Atonement instead of the chocolate and eggs. If you have got any ideas please pass them along.