Most years, Holy Week means going to many, many church services. To be forced to miss all those service this year because of COVID-19 was so sad and hard. But it was also a special opportunity. The sheer amount of energy and work to bring toddlers to Holy Week services (not even all of the services, and most likely none of them on time) usually means that there isn’t time or energy to do much in the way of special Holy Week activities at home.
But this year we got to focus on creating little moments for our kids to enter into the Easter story. I know we’ll look back and remember this Easter as particularly sweet. And I hope that we’ll be able to do some of these things next year as we get to worship at church!
Palm Sunday
The Sunday before Easter Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week and the commemoration of the Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem as a king, when the crowds greeted him with cries of Hosanna (Hebrew for Save Us!) and laying coats and palms down on the ground.
The day before Palm Sunday we had our sweet friends and neighbors, the Douglas family, drop off a few palms for us from their church. At breakfast Palm Sunday morning, we took out a couple of our children’s Bibles to read about Jesus entering Jerusalem.
We started with the beautiful gold leaf The Easter Story by Brian Wildsmith reading a few pages and keeping the rest for later in Holy Week, and then read from The Beginners’ Bible (actually the copy that was Evan’s sister’s when she was a girl!) which starts the story with “Two of Jesus’ friends went to look for a donkey.” (p. 464)
That phrase gave me an idea. Since I had gotten the kids a small stuffed animal donkey and camel for Christmas (I thought they might want to act out the Christmas story with them) I got up from the breakfast table, grabbed Jackson’s little Jellycat Bashful donkey, the kids coats, and our palms. I brought them all to the kitchen table for us to act it for them.
Well, 22-month-old Lily lost her mind. She absolutely had to put on her coat and go get her shoes and wail about not being able to be outside that instant, in the middle of breakfast. So after trying to console Lily, we regrouped slightly, grabbed everyone’s bathrobes and after breakfast acted it out.
First, I hid the donkey in the living room. Then, after the kids found the donkey, I had them bring the donkey over to our beautiful icon of Jesus (the original of which Evan was able see in person at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula). Then we put all our bathrobes on the ground, and had Jesus and the donkey process on the bathrobes as we sang a “Hosanna” song. (We sang the one from our church you can hear it at 8 minutes 30 seconds here.)
The kids loved the waving palms and singing and marching about so much, we did it four times in a row. (You can see in the photo that Lily firmly kept her coat ON, but was happy to put her bathrobe down.)
After Palm Sunday, we have a couple days of regular Lent left before all the special services start. This year for Lent, I made a puzzle out of an image of the crucifixion printed on some purple card stock. I put the image on some magnet photo sheets and cut it up into 45 pieces so that we put the first piece in on Ash Wednesday and the last piece in on Good Friday (Evan would want me to admit that making this was a labor of love). Jackson was very enthusiastic about the morning’s work of putting in the magnet on the simple cross atop a metal cookie sheet on our prayer shelf.
Our other Lenten practice was to sing “Create in Me a Clean Heart O God” based on Psalm 51 and say the Lord’s Prayer before meals. (Evan and I also give up coffee, alcohol, juice, and chocolate … although only the last two impact kids.)
Later that week, we started to get ready for the Triduum (Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday.) As the kids grow, we might try incorporating Spy Wednesday into our Holy week, but they are a little too young for that right now. Instead, we made a moss Easter garden on Wednesday.
Some Easter gardens are very elaborate with succulent plants arranged on beautiful terracotta earthenware, others focus on having quick germinating grass that, if you time it right, suddenly pops up on Easter morning. (I explained this to Evan, and he said, “Like a chia pet?” Yes, basically like an Easter chia pet.) But we were not going to be able to go to a garden store for anything, and made due with a lovely mossy patch on the north side of our yard, some sticks, a random stone from near our garage, the bottom of a salad container, bottom of an egg carton, some tape, a bit of cardboard, part of a paper bag, a jam jar, and some rubber bands. (Here’s a fairly simple, and slightly classier, tutorial.)
Maundy Thursday
From the Latin Mandatum meaning commandment, reflecting Jesus’ words “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.” Jesus washed his disciples feet before instituting the Eucharist by celebrating the Last Supper Passover meal with his Disciples.
Thursday afternoon we started prepping in earnest: baking, vacuuming, and gathering supplies. Since we’re paleo, we very rarely have bread, so it was definitely a special treat to make some flat bread. I’m sure the kids would have loved to help make the bread, but they needed a nap more. So I made it while they slept. I didn’t really follow a recipe, but it was probably something along the lines of this.
PALEO FLATBREAD INGREDIENTS
- 1/2 cup tapioca flour
- 1/4 cup coconut flour
- 1/4 cup arrowroot powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 large eggs
- 3 tablespoons avocado oil
- 3 tablespoons water (add the water slowly until you have the right texture)
Mix Together, and put in a pie plate or round cake dish. Bake at 350 until slightly brown, roughly 30 minutes. (If you want a real recipe try this one.)
While the bread was baking, I found our dishpan (from our first apartment without a dishwasher) buried under detritus in our basement utility sink. The irony of having to spend my precious nap time scrubbing a dirty dishpan out so that we could re-enact as a family the act of serving one another by washing dirty feet was not lost on me. The mundane tasks of preparation seemed more holy that afternoon.
Jackson woke up from his nap early, and I explained that we needed to clean the house up before our special church service. He was delighted to get to use our little cordless vacuum. I told him he could start vacuuming up the dirt by our front door, while I went downstairs to get our real vacuum. But he wanted to come with me, declaring “I like to help with you.”
I was particularly struck by that funny-four-year-old phrase “help with you” that summed up both his desire to be helpful and to be near me. It seemed that is how Jesus loves for us to help him in serving the world and loving others: “to help with him.” (Later, I read our Bishop’s Wife’s lovely Maundy Thursday Reflections on Jesus’ words to his disciples that night to “stay with me,” that also meditated on that theme.)
When Evan got home from school (he’s teaching to an empty classroom, recording all his lessons online these days and sending a million emails), we had our special service before dinner.
We sat on the living room carpet, held hands and sang our Lent song. Lily joined in enthusiastically on the last line of each stanza: “meeeee,” and Jackson upon hearing Lily sing then promptly joined in too with all the words and matching all the pitches, despite most of Lent opting to only listen. It was such a sweet moment with the afternoon spring sun streaming in and our family singing together. Jackson got to pick one other song for us to sing, and he chose “Jesus Loves Me,” which seems right for just about every occasion.
Then we read “The Servant King” chapter from The Jesus Storybook Bible (p. 286) and I brought out the dishpan full of warm water and some clean towels. The kids really loved this part, and wanted to have their feet washed on multiple occasions.
Then we brought out the special flat bread and wine / grape juice. (Actually we didn’t have any grape juice, so I had soaked some raisins in water and gave the kids raisin water in some thrift store sherry glasses. They so infrequently get juice (and if they do, it’s diluted with like 4 parts fizzy water) they were very excited about their raisin water…I think children who have had real grape juice may not have been as enthusiastic.) For dipping the bread we had some Paleo cashew pesto from Trader Joe’s and some spiced raisin, honey, cashew dip I made as a little homage to a seder plate. It was a special appetizer.
Then while I got our regular dinner on the table, Evan and the kids danced to one of their very favorite music videos “Love One Another” by the Newsboys (United) (Besides being a great song and a very fun video, it of course is based on Jesus’ new commandment to love one another. I’d highly recommend it.)
There is a lot more that can go on throughout the night of Maundy Thursday: the stripping of the altar, prayer walks and vigils that stretch into the night. But we kept ours short and sweet before dinner.
Good Friday
Sometimes called Great Friday. A Day of Fasting and Services commemorating the passion, crucifixion and death of Jesus.
We started out Good Friday by putting the last piece of the Lenten Crucifixion Magnet puzzle together in the morning at breakfast.
We went on a family walk that morning and put the kids down for a nap after lunch. Evan and I sat on the couch and read the day’s Gospel Reading (John 19) and read the collect of the day from The Book of Common Prayer.
Then when the kids woke up, we had our family’s Good Friday service. Jackson and Lily sat right down and held out their hands for their two expected songs and a story.
Evan and I also sang the first verses from “Were You There When they Crucified My Lord?”. Then we read “The Sun Stopped Shining” chapter from The Jesus Storybook Bible (p. 302).
After that, we went around and veiled all our icons of Jesus to represent his death and burial.
Traditionally, purple veils would be used, but we had almost every color but purple in our handmade play silk collection, so we used those.
Jackson was very intent on carefully covering his icon.
Lily put the silks on her head while she waited for her turn. And they both thought Evan veiling our high icons was great.
I was surprised both by the number of images of Jesus we have around our home and the number of play silks we have.
Then we came back to the living room and put the stone over the entrance of the tomb in our Easter garden.
Again, there is a lot more that can go into a Good Friday observance: Carrying a large cross, nailing written sins to the cross, the Stations of the Cross, fasting until 3 pm and breaking the fast with hot cross buns, to name a few. But keeping with our motto: less is more, we kept those traditions for future years.
Holy Saturday
The Saturday in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. It is a day marked by rest and waiting. Traditionally late in the evening the Great Easter Vigil is held, culminating in celebrating the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead after midnight.
Holy Saturday was the day I felt our absence from our church family most keenly–not only our current local parish that was going to embark on its first vigil this year, but also all the other parishes that we had been a part of in the past where the Easter Vigil was the best and most important celebration of the whole year. Mixed in with that the reality that even if we had an amazing Easter Vigil to go to this year, we’d probably not go with a four year old and a one year old.
Holy Saturday was also the most difficult to decide how to bring our children into commemorating the day. Part of the point of Holy Saturday is the waiting, the quiet, the lack of action compared to the days before and after. People rightly have pointed out that we live in a sort of Holy Saturday time, the already but not yet victory of Christ over sin and death.
There is a rich tradition, especially in the Eastern Orthodox Church of Christ descent into Hades, but that seemed a bit above what our kids could absorb. Actually, for Evan’s birthday my parents got him a beautiful icon of Christ’s descent into Hades and sent it with a couple of other icons to my brother’s house. But with the quarantine, we haven’t gotten to see my brother’s family or get the icon.
The Easter Vigil in the Anglican Church is a long and beautiful service in which the beginning centers around 9 Old Testament readings, often presented in artistic and theatrical ways. At first, I thought that maybe we could find a way to make some of those stories special as we read to the kids. Maybe we could wait until dark and then have our own Easter Alleluia before the kids go to bed?
But Evan pointed out several challenges with those. First, the symbolism for him of Easter being celebrated after midnight was important, and we certainly weren’t going to keep up or wake our children up for that. Second, the kids, especially four-year-old Jackson, was tracking along with the narrative of Jesus’ death and to suddenly swing back to Adam and Eve and Noah and Moses was going to be confusing. (Update 2021: I wrote a special Easter Vigil Readings for children.)
Instead, Evan suggested that we just keep watch by the Easter Garden tomb. I thought about that, and came up with the idea that we could pick some wild flowers on our walk that morning and put them on the tomb when we got home.
So instead of a post-nap-time service, we opted for one right before bed. (And after nap time we did home haircuts, followed by baths so bedtime prep was going to be really quick after our little service).
We lit a candle and then we read Psalm 130.
Then I went to put on some taizé music I love, an Advent song (don’t tell anyone! Although actually theologically speaking, Advent and Lent are both about waiting in preparation) called “Wait for the Lord.”
While I was trying to get the music on, Evan suggested to the kids that they make duplo legos tombs.
I would not have thought of this, but it was kind of perfect, and the kids really liked it. And even for me, it was a really sweet time of just sitting in the dark, looking at the candle-lit tomb, listening to the music, and putting legos together.
The sunset dissolved into black outside our living room window as we quietly waited out the end of the day, the dark silhouette of the bare trees fading into night.
It was a very different kind of vigil, but a very sweet one that I think we’ll remember for a long time.
In years to come, perhaps we’ll be able to do more traditional vigil things even if the kids aren’t up for a full vigil. We could have a bonfire at dusk and then light a homemade Paschal Candle from it. We could read (some of) the beautiful 9 Old Testament readings. At midnight or dawn we could process around our yard like the women walking to the tomb. Because Christians have been keeping Easter vigils for thousands of years in thousands of places, there are many many beautiful traditions and ways of letting the reality and glory of Easter sink into our hearts.
Easter Sunday
The Sunday which commemorates the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from death. It’s a day of feasting and celebration. In the Anglican Church it’s marked with a great noisy “Hallelujah” (Hebrew for “Praise the Lord”) which has been absent from the liturgy during the six weeks of Lent.
Easter morning felt very much like how we’ve been doing Christmas morning with toddlers. We tried to keep most of the excitement until after a fairly regular wake up time and breakfast. Although Jackson immediately upon walking out of his room announced “We’ve got to get the Easter books out Mama. It’s Easter.” Before taking down some library Easter books on semi-permanent quarantine loan: That Grand Easter Day and The Parable of the Lily. A boy after my own heart.
At the breakfast table, instead of our Lent song we sang the Sunday School classic Allelu, Allelu, Allelu, Allelujah! Praise Ye the Lord! and read the Resurrection story from The Story for Children and then we read the “God’s Wonderful Surprise” chapter The Jesus Storybook Bible (p. 310).
We had some special chocolate ginger banana cake that I had made the day before. And of course, Evan and I got coffee!
PALEO GINGER CHOCOLATE BANANA CAKE INGREDIENTS
- 3 bananas, mashed (about 1 ½ cups)
- 3 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup melted ghee (butter or coconut oil would work too)
- 1/2 cup tapioca flour
- 1/4 cup coconut flour
- 1/4 cup arrowroot powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon ground ginger
- 1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/4 cup sugar (or blended madjool dates)
- 1 cup chocolate chips
Mix wet ingredients together (I like to use a food processor), then add dry ingredients, keeping the chocolate chips to stir (with a spoon) in at the end. Bake in round or loaf pan(s) at 350 until knife comes out clean (minus the melted chocolate) for about 50 minutes. Again, if you want a real recipe see check out this one.
After we wiped up chocolate faces and fingers, we got our bells out. The silver ones are special bells from our DC Anglican church, Church of the Advent, who gives them as membership gifts and everyone brings them to the Easter Vigil and morning service to ring and shout during the first Hallelujahs of the Easter Season.
Then we rolled away the stone from our Easter garden tomb, rang our bells, and shouted Hallelujah!
And went about the house removing the play silks from the icons of Christ, ringing our bells and shouting more hallelujahs.
Before coming back to the living room to our big family Easter basket.
It was filled with dark chocolate (bars from Aldi and chocolate treats from Trader Joe’s), a handmade Easter Bunny angel from my childhood, and green yarn Easter “grass” I made out of some pretty wool yarn last year.
There were also two special Easter books The Garden, The Curtain, and the Cross and The Donkey Who Carried A King, and plastic Easter eggs (empty ones, the kids aren’t aware yet that they could be filled with candy).
Then we got dressed and headed out for a walk. We brought out bells and on the way stopped at our friends and neighbors, the Douglas family, to yell Happy Easter. They came out on their front porch and we stood on the sidewalk ringing the bells and shouting Hallelujah! Christ is Risen! to each other. The forecast had been for cold, clouds, and rain, but mid-morning the sun peaked out.
Then after lunch and nap time we had an Easter egg hunt. By that time, it was cold and rainy, so it was an inside egg hunt.
Then, we had a quiet Easter dinner with ham and green beans and sweet potatoes (and part of a bottle of wine for Evan and me).
In years to come I hope that we will be able to have Easter dresses and bow ties and died eggs. I hope that we’ll be scrambling to get to church and to a special Easter lunch with friends or family afterwards. I hope we’ll put out our Easter Resurrection icon and add to our meager Easter decorations piece by piece over the years (thanks Ellen for the mini-bunny platter!).
I’m a firm believer in slowly building up holiday traditions, book by book, special recipe by special recipe. Some of what we did this Holy Week I planned weeks in advance, or even thought of doing last year. Other moments were spontaneous decisions brought about by the limitations of the year at home.
I think the tendency to collapse special holiday memories into one another means that our memories can be unreliable. We think that our parents did something every year when they did it three years in a row.
This is good news to parents of young children! We do not need to do everything every year for our kids to remember it as part of the fabric of their childhoods. One or two special things is enough. Plus practically a few sweet treats and regular bedtimes helps kids (and adults!) have a better day (and days to come afterwards.)
Although, we also have to hold that in tension with the reality that doing anything special comes at the price of time and energy to get it ready and a little bit of crabby whiny children (and maybe adults) afterwards. There are a lot of emotions that come with Holy Week! (And one of the best board books for children is Holy Week: An Emotions Primer board book by Danielle Hitchen and Jessica Blanchard).
Overall, I found with little kids a story, a song, a prayer, and a tactile experience (art, dancing, acting out, building something) is enough, but more than that, because it was so sweet for them, and thus also became sweet to us. I also get lots of great ideas from the blogs like Carrots for Michaelmas, The Homely Hours, and Catholic All Year.
Happy Easter Friends! Christ is Risen!
How did you celebrate Holy Week and Easter at home this year?