Festivals
Easter Celebrations – Our Top 7 Activities for Holy Week and Easter Sunday
Apr
With Easter fast approaching, here are a few of our favourite Easter celebrations. In case you are without the dates this year, Holy Week and Easter Sunday are:
Holy Week
Holy week begins on April 10 and continues until April 16.
- April 10 Palm Sunday
- April 15 Good Friday
- April 16 Holy Saturday
- April 17 Easter Sunday
1. Easter Trees
Easter Trees come from a German tradition called Ostereierbaum, where trees and bushes are festively decorated with eggs and wooden decorations. For hundreds of years German families have been decorating the Ostereirbaum, and no one really knows where this tradition started.
In our home, it became a tradition at the first of the month to go out into the garden and cut a branch, bring it into the house, and bed it directly into a large pot. The indoor version of the Easter Tree sits as a centerpiece of the dining table and decorating it is an activity that the family loves.
This very simple idea becomes the center of our Easter celebrations.
It’s such fun to work with the children; we decorate eggs, make little rabbits, moons, and flowers to hang on the tree.
By the time Easter arrives, the tree is full of little wonders.
So along with the festival itself, the time leading up to Easter can be a wonderful opportunity to make decorations and tell stories to help children understand this moment and all our celebrations.
2. Easter Hare
Easter would not be complete without a visit from the Easter Hare. If we are lucky, the Easter Hare will pay us a visit. One story of how a little hare became a symbol synonymous with Easter involves the goddess Ostara. Ostara is the German Goddess of Spring. Although not the most ancient of Easter lore, one such tale recounts how Ostara was thought to have magically turned a bird into a hare to celebrate the arrival of the new season.
Given the hare’s ability as a prolific procreator, and the bird’s ability to lay eggs, this combination quickly became a seasonal symbol of new life and fertility. As well as giving us a clue as to how a hare can lay eggs.
Easter Hare joyfully obliged the goddess by laying colored Easter eggs in celebration, hiding the colorful treats, and in doing so giving children something they can hunt for. Easter egg hunts are fun for the hunter as well as the hider. Additionally, the children may hunt and put their finds in the teachers’ baskets to be shared later.
As luck would have it in our home, the Easter Hare brings the children a basket filled with small treasures, which is a welcome way to escape the masses of chocolate which can overtake this festival.
3. Easter Eggs
Throughout history, for millennia, the egg has been used in rites and rituals, symbolic gifts, and representations from new life to the circle of life. Whether Christian, Pagan, Jewish, or Indigenous Japan, the egg has meaning and significance, that invokes, miracle, mystery and magic. The egg is the perfect self-contained promise of new life; symbolizing the rebirth of nature, the Earth’s fertility, and, in some traditions, the universe itself. And the Easter egg is no less significant or without its symbol and tradition. Many Easter crafts involve eggs.
4. Blown Eggs
One such craft involves emptying an egg and creating a decoration using the hollowed shell. These delicate festive decorations are called Blown Eggs. To blow eggs, you need to have a sharp needle to make a small hole at one end of the egg, and create a larger hole (around the diameter of a straw) at the other. Then you blow firmly through the smaller hole as if to inflate a balloon, blowing out the contents of the shell. Blown eggs can be dyed with tissue paper and hung around the house, adding more colorful accents to the celebration.
Spring season gives us many opportunities for crafting and celebrating the turn of the year towards the sun. The imagination can go wild.
From kites, ribbon fliers to magic wands, the energy and the colors of spring are stirring the creative forces,and inviting the whole family to come out and play.
5. Five Currant Buns Song
This song is another way to add wonder and creativity to your Easter celebrations.
Five currant buns in a baker’s shop.
Big and round with a cherry on the top,
Along came a boy with a penny one day,
Bought a currant bun and took it away.
Four currant buns in a baker’s shop.
Big and round with a cherry on the top,
Along came a boy with a penny one day,
Bought a currant bun and took it away.
Three currant buns in a baker’s shop.
Big and round with a cherry on the top,
Along came a boy with a penny one day,
Bought a currant bun and took it away.
Two currant buns in a baker’s shop.
Big and round with a cherry on the top,
Along came a boy with a penny one day,
Bought a currant bun and took it away.
One currant bun in a baker’s shop.
Big and round with a cherry on the top,
Along came a boy with a penny one day,
Bought the currant bun and took it away.
6. Meditation
“Teach me, Lord, to think on these things today and every day: ‘whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable [and] excellent or praiseworthy.’”
PHILIPPIANS 4:8
7. Celebrate the Waldorf Seasons with the Easter Wheel
This beautiful Wooden Easter Wheel takes children and adults on a journey, celebrating Waldorf Seasons and ultimately to the centre, towards light and a celebration of Easter or Spring Equinox. The wheel allows children to travel through the journey towards Easter, rather than just arriving.
The illustrated wooden wheel captures Spring, with its light joyful energy. Filled with animals and people. The Easter Wheel creates a space on your table or in your home to take time and think about the changing seasons. You could ask children questions like what can you see here, what to spot outside?
Get yours today by visiting the Wilded Family shop: https://waldorffamily.com/product/easter-wheel-waldorf-seasons/
