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Health & Fitness

How to Make Easter Real for Your Kids

Tips for Busy Moms and Dads to Help Kids Understand the Real Reason for the Season

Jelly beans… cellophane-wrapped baskets… giant chocolate bunnies… As I spotted all the trappings of Easter in the supermarket, I thought to myself, No wonder kids get confused about Easter!

Back when our two children were young, explaining Christmas was a cinch. 
The birth of Jesus is relatively simple to grasp. Nativity scenes, carols and pageants all reinforce the message, making it easier to keep Santa Claus in perspective. But how to explain to Katy and Brinck something as profound and mysterious as the Resurrection?

I knew that other parents were struggling with this challenge too. In fact, I took the greatest comfort in the advice of one friend who said, “Start with the traditions you already have.”

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On Good Friday in our home, we always dye Easter eggs, at least three dozen. 
What could be a more obvious symbol of new life than eggs?  So I told the children about a baby chick I once saw hatching in an incubator. I described how he poked his way out with his little beak.  “A new life. That’s what we celebrate at Easter,” I explained, “the new life we have in Christ.”

The next bit of inspiration came while I was shopping at our local card and gift shop.  I found a set of Bible storybooks for our son, Brinck, and came across a tiny gold cross necklace for Katy. I tucked these presents between the jellybeans and chocolate-marshmallow eggs in the children’s Easter baskets, and since then I’ve added prayer journals, inspirational CD’s and videos, Scripture stickers and bookmarks.  I like the tradition of Easter baskets, especially when I can include gifts that will nurture the children’s faith – especially books. Books are the best!  In fact, I am so enthusiastic about giving books that help to encourage and nurture young peoples’ faith that I eventually wound up writing my own book for children, If I Could Ask God Anything: Awesome Bible Answers for Curious Kids (Thomas Nelson Publishers).

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The third idea came from a contributor to Guideposts magazine, Posy Baker Lough. “Try something,” she suggested, “to give children a good visual image of the Resurrection.”  She described a project at her church, where the children were given caterpillars, and in the weeks leading up to Easter the kids watched them spin cocoons, metamorphosing into butterflies. “The butterflies were released just before the Easter Sunday service,” Posy said. “Afterward, when we explained to the kids that the cocoon was like Christ’s death and entombment, and that His Resurrection was like the beautiful butterfly, they understood.”  

At Easter time, images of new life are usually easy to find: crocuses and
daffodils blooming, lambs gamboling in fields, birds busy making their nests,
all shades of green returning to the landscape. But sometimes spring comes late (or Easter arrives early) and the holiday meets a gray, cold day. Then I
think of the wonderful story my friend Alison told me…

On an unseasonably cold Easter morning when Alison was ten years old, her mother urged her to go outside to see what was in the yard. There in the snow her mother had fashioned a rainbow of hundreds of brightly-colored lollipops,
sparkling in the pale sunlight like bits of stained glass.  “It seemed like a miracle,” Alison said, “magical, beautiful, full of mystery and wonder.”

And that, I realize, is what I wanted more than anything else to give my children: the miracle of Easter.  That first Easter Sunday was certainly God’s most astonishing miracle, the resurrection of His Son Jesus and the promise it holds for us all – eternal life.

So finally, go to church on Easter. Put on your best clothes, take flowers from your garden, sing all the hymns with loud and glad alleluias. Celebrate! Last Easter Sunday, I was delighted when the little boy sitting in front of us turned to his mother and said, “Christmas is Jesus’ birthday – but Easter is everybody’s birthday!”

Yes, it is. Easter is the time for you and your children – for all of us – to joyfully celebrate our new birth.

Kathryn “Kitty” Slattery is a long-time contributing editor for Guideposts
magazine and the author of several books for children and adults.  This story is adapted for The New Canaan Patch from her new book, Heart Songs: A Family Treasury of True Stories of Hope and Inspiration (Guideposts Inspiring Voices).  Visit the author at her website: www.KathrynSlattery.com, and on Facebook: Kathryn “Kitty” Slattery.

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