How to Celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior

Forty days of Lent is drawing to a close; we are walking through Holy Week and are about to arrive at the biggest celebration of the Church Year, Easter Sunday! But Easter isn't just one lone day at the end of weeks of fasting, prayer, and reflection. Easter Sunday kicks off the season of Easter, which lasts 50 days until Pentecost Sunday.

In the cycle of the Church Year, seasons of fasting are followed by seasons of feasting. So how can we press into a season of feasting and celebrating our Savior's resurrection for the next 50 days? Here are several ideas; hopefully you can find a couple that will work for you and your family this year!

Easter Sunday

It's a celebration, so let's party! A party looks different depending on the person, house and family you come from, but a party usually incorporates the five senses. There might be music, some fun activities, almost always good food, and maybe even some decorations. Think about how you want to celebrate Christ's resurrection tomorrow; maybe it's a playlist of Easter worship and hymns that you put on first thing in the morning, or your grandma's famous coffee cake for breakfast. It might be a special meal for dinner, or a banner that says "He is Risen!" You might want to fill your house with Easter lilies, yellow daffodils and pink tulips. Of all the days to go all out on a celebration, Resurrection Sunday is the day!

Even though we will be in our homes for worship services this year, we can still continue the sense of celebration by dressing up in our Easter best. If you have something white, you might want to wear it to remind yourself of your baptism and the new life we have in Christ! 

The Week Following Easter

We can keep following Jesus' footsteps even beyond Holy Week. Here are two recommendations for you to try sometime during the week after Easter Sunday:

1. Fish for Breakfast

Read the beautiful story in John 21, where Jesus appears to the disciples and makes them fish and bread for breakfast. Yes, the resurrected Christ cooks breakfast for a bunch of fishermen! After you read this passage, go ahead and eat some fish for breakfast! Baked white fish with eggs and toast could be a place to start, but if you have a fire pit, wrap some fish in foil and make it really authentic. Or if fish for breakfast just isn't your thing, try going fishing after reading this passage. 

2. Take an "Emmaus Walk"

Read Luke 24:13-35, and then take a walk with a neighbor, friend or your family and discuss a topic from Scripture, or talk about what it would have been like to be these followers of Jesus having this conversation on the road.

The Season of Easter

Here are some ideas for keeping the joy and celebration of the resurrection before us in the 50 days of Eastertide:

1. Listen to Easter music. 

Use a playlist like this one or pick a different Easter hymn/song to learn each week during this season. You could sing this song every morning after breakfast or each night after dinner.

2. Keep your Easter decor up until Pentecost. 

If you have a cross you could drape it with a white cloth, or maybe you want to make or purchase a special sign or banner that says," He Lives!" or "He is Risen!" to keep out during the season of Easter.

3. Party every week!

Pick a certain day of the week and plan a party on that day every week of Eastertide! It doesn't have to be complicated-you could have a Blue Bell ice cream party, a water balloon party, an Easter music jam session (if you're the musical type!), a game of hide and seek (read John 20:19 and talk about how the disciples went into hiding after Jesus' crucifixion), or a movie night (Maybe something like Ben Hur (1959) or Jesus of Nazareth (1977), or another family favorite. Be sure to preview before showing to your kids!).

4. Make or buy a special candle to remind you of the resurrection, and light it at breakfast or dinner each day during the season of Easter. Try this DIY idea. 

5. Join Natalie every Monday of Eastertide for an Easter themed children's book read aloud on our YouTube channel:

Thanksgiving and Thankfulness

1 Thessalonians 5:18 tells us to "Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you." Giving thanks in all types of situations is God's will for us. Not only does giving thanks mean walking in obedience to God, it also gives us a new perspective on life. Instead of feeling frustrated and discouraged by all the less than perfect situations we encounter each day, giving thanks turns our eyes to all the good gifts God has given us, and helps us to realize that He is working even in the midst of the hard things. When we start giving thanks, our eyes are drawn to the glory of God, and our hearts turn to Him in praise, not just for His good gifts, but for who He is. We all know this, and yet it is so easy to forget to be thankful. We even forget to thank God we can breathe through our nose until a bad cold comes along!

So, giving thanks is God's will for us. It's good for us and our spiritual lives and our perspective. But we so often forget to be thankful! And here enters November.

With the holiday of Thanksgiving coming up at the end of the month, November is a natural time to turn our hearts to the habit of being thankful. Here are a few ways to cultivate a heart of thankfulness in your children (and yourself!) in the month of November with just a few minutes a day:

1. Make a thankful tree.

You could also make a thankful bowl, or box, or pretty much anything that holds small slips of paper. To make a thankful tree, scour your backyard or local park for a short branch with lots of places to hang little pieces of paper. Then stick this tree in a vase, and place beside it a stack of small pieces of paper with a hole punched through one of the side. You can use pieces of string or Christmas ornament hooks to attach these pieces of paper to your thankful tree. Each day in November, have each member of your family write (or help them write, for the littlest ones) one thing they are thankful for on a slip of paper, and hang it on the tree. Sometime on Thanksgiving Day read through all the slips of paper and reflect on God's goodness! You can save these in an envelope with the year marked on it. It's really meaningful to look back on past years as well!

2. Memorize a verse about thankfulness.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 is a great choice, but there are many to choose from! Just read it together 2-3 times as a family at breakfast each day, and you should all have it memorized by the end of the month!

3. Read a different verse about thankfulness together as a family, at dinner time or whatever time of day works best for you, each day in November, and spend a few minutes discussing it together. Pick out your own or use this printable list.

4. Three kernels of corn at Thanksgiving dinner.

Start a new family tradition and give each person at your table three (or five, if you want to do more!) kernels of popcorn. Pass a jar around the table, and take turns sharing one thing you are thankful for from the past year as you drop a kernel in the jar. Go around the table three times until everyone has used all their corn. This tradition stems from the legend that the pilgrims ate a ration of just a few kernels of corn a day their first winter in Plymouth. It can be a great tangible activity to help us slow down and thank the Lord! As Black Friday comes earlier and earlier each year, this is a small way to prepare our hearts for contentment amidst the waves of consumerism waiting to wash over us.

5. Listen to some music that will encourage you in gratitude on this Spotify playlist.

Bonus: Picture book recommendations to read with your kids.

• Give Thanks to the Lord by Karma Wilson. This book is inspired by Psalm 92 and walks through a family Thanksgiving dinner.

• Thankful by Eileen Spinelli. A look at thankfulness that combines the idea of vocation as well.

• Squanto and the Miracle of Thanksgiving by Eric Metaxes. This excellent retelling of the story of Squanto emphasizes how God used the hard circumstances in Squanto's life to lead to the huge blessing he ended up being to the struggling colony of Pilgrims.

• Sharing the Bread: An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving Story by Pat Zietlow Miller. This whimsical book follows the preparations for Thanksgiving dinner, and has a nice emphasis on family and gratitude.

• Thank You For Thanksgiving by Dandi Daley Mackall. A little boy waits for his turn to say what he is thankful for at Thanksgiving dinner.

Let's be intentional this November about being grateful, and let these beautiful habits of praise and thanks transform us and our children more into the image of Christ each day.

Soli Deo gloria