EP 37: Our Favorite Easter Traditions

In honor of holy week, I ‘m sharing a few of our family’s favorite Easter traditions today.

Although I love baskets and bunnies and colorful candy as much as anyone, we’ve always tried to place the main emphasis of this season on the sacrificial death and bodily resurrection of Jesus – and on what Christ’s finished work means to those who put their faith in Him. 

For specific ways to do this, listen in this week’s episode in full or scroll past the show notes to read the transcript.

Our family’s favorite Easter Traditions

1. We read together.

One of our favorite Easter traditions involves reading aloud. First of all, we read scripture. We read the gospel account of Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection, but we also read Old Testament prophesies — like Isaiah 53 – that were fulfilled in Christ.

Several years ago, at the request of one of my subscribers, I put together a scripture chain that incorporates many of those prophetic passages together with the gospel accounts, which families can read through during the season of Lent.

I suspect the reader who requested that resource was Catholic. I’m not, but I’m certainly in favor of reading and meditating on Scripture all year long, and the weeks leading up to Easter is a perfect time for focusing our thoughts and attention on what Jesus accomplished by giving His life for us.

I’ll put a link in the show notes for that free printable resource. It may be too late to do all 40+ readings for Lent, but I made it in such a way that the first page can stand alone and covers the passion week. So if you’re interested, you could print it out today and read just those last 7 verses during this week leading up to Easter.

Also, we have several free printable Easter-themed coloring pages and other resources on our family website that feature many of these same Bible verses. I’ll try to remember to link those in the show notes, as well.

In addition to Bible readings for Easter, we own several picture books we’ve traditionally read with our children this time of year. One of my favorites is a book written and illustrated by Carol Heyer called The Easter Story. My copy is about 30 years old, but I’ll look and see if it’s still in print and link it in the show notes if it is.

There are two things I especially love about this book. First, the text is short and simple and does a good job of following the Biblical account of the passion week. And second, I love the illustrations. They are very realistic – not cartoonish – and they are designed in such a way that Jesus’s face is never shown. You see his hands, or his back, or the hem of his garment, but never his face.

2. We bake together.

Another thing the children and I traditionally do at Easter time is make resurrection rolls.

For several years, we tried making meringues. I found a recipe on Pinterest that had a scripture verse to read with the addition of each ingredient. For instance, while whipping the egg whites, you read Matthew 27:26 about Jesus being whipped.

While pounding the pecans to bits, you read Isaiah 53:5 about Jesus being crushed for our inequities. When adding vanilla, you let the kids smell how fragrant it is, then read Matthew 26:12 about the woman who anointed Jesus’s feet with perfume before His arrest. And when mixing in the vinegar, read about how the Roman soldiers offered Jesus a drink of wine vinegar while He was hanging on the cross. (Luke 23:36)

You mix all the ingredients together and put them in a warm oven (which is symbolic of the tomb). Then you’re supposed to switch off the heat and seal the oven with masking tape. The next morning, when you take the resurrection cookies out of the oven and bite into them, you’ll discover an empty hole in the center of each meringue.

At least, that’s how it was supposed to work. Ours meringues always looked more like flat pancakes than empty tombs. We failed miserably at this endeavor for several years running before giving up and making resurrection rolls instead.

For those, you just need a bag of large marshmallows and a package of crescent roll dough. The marshmallow symbolizes the body of Jesus. You’re supposed to roll the marshmallows in cinnamon and sugar (to symbolize the spices with which they anointed Christ’s dead body) then wrap them in the crescent roll dough (like wrapping his body in linen cloths for burial).

Then you bake according to package directions. When the rolls are baked and cooled, you’ll find that the marshmallow melted away and the roll is now empty – just like Jesus’s tomb was empty.

3. We hunt eggs together.

Yes, our kids hunt Easter eggs, but we put a Biblical spin on that practice, too. One of the ways we do this is by hunting Resurrection eggs. You may have seen these in stores. There are a dozen eggs, eleven of which contain tiny objects somehow connected to Jesus’s death, burial, and resurrection:

• A small jar of perfume, symbolic of the one the woman used to anoint his feet.
• A miniature whip, reminiscent of the cat of nine tails the Roman soldiers used to flog Jesus.
• A few pieces of silver, a reminder of the price for which Judas betrayed the LORD.
• A small rock, to signify the huge stone that was placed in front of Christ’s tomb.
• And, of course, the last egg is empty – just like his grave on Easter morning.

You can buy ready-made Resurrection Eggs online or in Christian bookstores, but I made my own miniatures out of clay and other household materials. Also, I expanded the set to include more details so I accommodate more children. After the first few grandchildren were born, I bumped it up to eighteen eggs, then – as even more grandkids joined us – I expanded my set further to 24 eggs. That way every child would be able to hold a numbered egg and crack it open to see what was inside when we got to that point in the story.

If you would like to make your own set of resurrection eggs, we actually offer a set free printables on our website to help you do it. I’ll link that resource in today’s show notes. Just print out the tiny pictures, cut them apart, and put one in every egg (except the last one, which is supposed to remain empty, and your good to go.

Another thing we’ve done – and another free printable resource I’ll link in the notes – is putting together Scrambled Egg Bible Verses. I cut out a set of egg shaped cards and print one or two words to a particular Bible verse on each card, then hide them. When the kids gather all the little egg shapes, they work together to put them in order of the Bible verse.

We work on several verses simultaneously by printing each verse on a different color of egg—so all the yellow eggs might spell out 1 John 4:9 “God loved us and sent His son” and the green eggs might spell have Matthew 28:6: “He is risen just as he said.” And the pink eggs would have another verse and the blue ones yet another. You get the idea.

Then the last kind of eggs we hunt are glow -in-the-dark eggs. I bought a dozen dozen – isn’t that called a gross? – 144 of those tiny little finger lights several years ago for this purpose. Glow sticks would work, too, but would not be reusable – you’d have to get new glow sticks every year, whereas we’ve used the same finger lights every year for nearly a decade.

Anyway, we turn on each finger light and place it in an egg to be hunted by the children after dark. Then we talk about the fact that Jesus is the light of the world and read several verses related to that. The eggs look so pretty all lit up, and they’re pretty easy to spot after dark, even when they’re hidden in flower pots or under bushes or in the branches of small trees. And once the kids gather all the eggs, they can exchange each finger light inside for a piece of candy of their choice.

In fact, we seldom ever put candy inside the eggs anymore, we just hunt the empty eggs and let the kids select a piece of candy for each egg they find. That way, every one gets the kind of candy they most like and the chocolate doesn’t get all melty in the Texas heat, because down south its already pretty hot in early spring – at least hot enough to melt a chocolate egg or bunny and make it pretty messy to eat without first cooling in off in the freezer.

4. We sing songs together.

Another of my favorite Easter traditions is singing the songs of the season. This includes all the beloved Easter hymns I grew up singing: “Lo in the grave he lay, Jesus my Savior. Waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord. Up from the grave He arose with a mighty triumph o’er his foes. He arose a victor from the dark domain and He lives forever with his saints to reign. He arose! He arose! Halelujah! Christ arose!”

Or how about this one: “Christ the Lord is ris’n today Alleluia! Sons of men and angels say, Alleluia!”

Or maybe you prefer this one: “He lives! He lives! Christ Jesus lives today. He walks with me and talks with me along life’s narrow way. He lives! He lives! Salvation to impart. You ask me how I know He lives. He lives within my heart!”

Although, I would interject, we have far more proof than just the indwelling of Christ’s spirit within us that He conquered death and the grave and was resurrected in the flesh.

Or perhaps you share my father’s favorite: “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow. Because He lives, all fear is gone! Because I know He holds the future, and life is worth the living just because He lives.”

There are some other, lesser-known Easter hymns I enjoy singing, as well. I keep an open hymnal by my kitchen sink. It’s a little yellowed and a little watermarked from so many years of use there, but this time of year, I open it to the Easter section and belt out these beloved praises to my Savior at every opportunity.

Another kind of Easter anthem we’ve enjoyed in years past is our family’s own original music videos. For several years running, the kids and I made a new music video every Easter to post on You Tube as a way of sharing the gospel with those who’ve never heard.

The first one we recorded was entitled “Let Them Know.” That one featured a parody of the immensely popular Disney song “Let It Go” from Frozen, which of course had such a catchy tune, but some truly atrocious lyrics I couldn’t bear to sing around the house – or hear anybody else sing either.

Have you ever listened to the original words? “It’s time to see what I can do, to test the limits and break through. No right, no wrong, no rules for me – I’m free!” Let me tell you, the moral relativism those lines describe is not freedom at all. It’s utter bondage.

The fact is, we are all going to serve something. Romans 6:20-23 tells us we will either be a slave to sin and free in regard to righteousness – where the end of that arrangement is death – or we will be set free from sin, and become slaves of God, produces fruit to holiness, and the end, everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So I penned new words: “It’s time to see what God can do. In every test he’ll see me through. My debt’s been paid, no guilt for me. I’m free! Let them know. Let them know: Christ alone has the power to save. Let them know. Let them know. He has triumphed over the grave…”

Anyway, you get the idea. You can look it up on YouTube if you want to hear the rest of it or see any of the other Easter music videos we’ve made. I’ll include a link in the show notes to help you find it.

We also made a parody cover of Meaghan Trainor’s “All About that Bass” called “All About God’s Grace.” Again, the tune is so catchy, but the words to the original were not anything I wanted to hear my little girls singing around the house.

And the last one was a parody of “Never Enough” from The Greatest Showman, only my lyrics read “All the strength of a thousand armies, all the pow’rs of evil and darkness, will never be enough to sever Jesus love for me. Never Never. Never enough. Never never. To sever his love, for me, for me, for me! For me.”

I’ll put links in today’s show notes to those songs, too.

5. We go to church together.

And the last of our family’s favorite Easter traditions is attending church together (something we do every other Sunday, as well).

In addition to going to regular worship services on Easter Sunday, we’ve occasionally participated in sunrise services held at the crack of dawn.

And we usually also attend a Good Friday service, as well. Both are wonderful ways to focus our hearts and minds on the ultimate sacrifice Jesus made on our behalf, and I highly recommend them.

We usually go to the Good Friday service held at our own local church, although one year we were traveling over Easter weekend, so we attended a huge outdoor worship service on Good Friday where a popular author we liked was scheduled to speak.

His talk, much like his books, was filled to overflowing with heart-warming stories and funny anecdotes. And I’m pretty sure he made reference to at least a couple of Bible verses during his talk.

But do you know what was conspicuously absent from his remarks that day? Any mention whatsoever of sin.

Bear in mind that the whole purpose of a Good Friday service is to remember the fact that Jesus died – and yet this author failed to explain why Jesus’s death was even necessary in the first place.

As I stared out over the immense crowd gathered for the occasion … there had to be at least 13 or 14,000 people in attendance that day… I could only think , “what a missed opportunity!”

And I don’t think his neglect to mention sin was a nervous oversight. I believe it was intentional and calculated.

It seems like a lot of believers these days are so afraid of hurting people’s feelings that they are willing to water down the gospel.

SO instead of talking about sin and rebellion and our dark, evil hearts that desperately need the grace of God and a Savior to do for us what we are utterly helpless to do for ourselves, they talk about mistakes and miscalculations. About blunders and brokenness.

They soften the language so it sounds like we merely slipped up every now and again. That we made an error in judgement. That we misunderstood or got confused.

They would never suggest that we willfully rebelled against a righteous God and stubbornly clung to going our own way rather than humbly submit to following Him.

But those euphemisms are not consistent with the picture God paints in his Word of our position apart from grace.

And until we have an accurate view of our own wretched sinfulness, we will never fully appreciate our desperate, desolate need for a Savior.

• Ephesians 2:1 – “You were dead in your trespasses and sins.”
• Romans 3:23 – “All have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.”
• Eph 4:18-19 – “They are darkened in their understanding and alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardness of their hearts. Having lost all sense of shame, they have given themselves over to sensuality for the practice of every kind of impurity, with a craving for more.”
• Psalms 14:1-3 – “They are corrupt; their acts are vile. There is no one who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven upon the sons of men to see if any understand, if any seek God. All have turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
• Isaiah 59:9-13 – “We hope for light, but there is darkness; for brightness, but we walk in gloom. Like the blind, we feel our way along the wall, groping like those without eyes. We stumble at midday as in the twilight; among the vigorous we are like the dead. We all growl like bears and moan like doves. We hope for justice, but find none, for salvation, but it is far from us. For our transgressions are multiplied before You, and our sins testify against us. Our transgressions are indeed with us, and we know our iniquities: rebelling and denying the LORD, turning away from our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering lies from the heart.”
• Jeremiah 17:9 – “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately wicked; Who can understand it?”
• Mark 7:21-23 – “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within and defile a man.”
• Romans 3:10-18 “There is no one righteous, not even one. There is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit. The venom of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness. Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery lie in their wake, and the way of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

Dead in sin. Blind. Full of darkness and corruption. Foolish. Deceitful. At enmity with God. Vile. Venomous. Worthless. Miserable. Rebellious and Ruined. The Bible says this is man’s natural estate before God.

Which sounds a lot more serious than just being a little mistaken or slightly confused, doesn’t it?

But that is what makes the good news of Jesus substitutionary death so marvelous and miraculous and rich in mercy!

• Romans 5:8 – “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
• Isaiah 53:5-6 – “But he was wounded for our transgressions….”
• Romans 6:23 – “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal…”
• John 3:16-17 – “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.”
• 1 John 1:9-10 – “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”
• Romans 10:9-10 – “if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation.”
• Ephesians 2:8-10 – “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God;  not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

And that, friend, is my prayer for you: That, if you’ve never the free gift of salvation Jesus offers that you will do so without delay.

And that if you have, you will join me in marveling over the magnificent love of God who would send His son to die for such a wretch as I! And will proclaim with me the good news that Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed!