Easter Traditions Tag

Happy, happy Easter! He is risen, alleluia!

I’ve seen many Christmas-y tags, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an Easter one…so I got the bold idea of creating my own Easter tag. I realize, however, that if I were going to do that, I should have prepared more beforehand. I had therefore settled on writing a post about various Easter traditions instead, but the way that I thought of grouping them in my head sounded tag-ish, so I decided to call it a tag anyway. (The post title somehow looks more compelling that way, too, a reason which cannot be overlooked.) I’m not going to tag anyone, but if you want to answer these questions yourself, please do…or I could just do this again next year and really do it as a proper tag that time.

So, here are the rules for this sort-of-tag:

Name one Easter tradition in each of these categories:

– a tradition you always do every year
– a tradition from when you were a kid
– a tradition you would like to start

A tradition we do every year

~ every year, before we head off to the evening Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, we have an early dinner (timed such that we don’t have to worry about the Eucharistic fast) modeled on the Passover meal that Jesus and His Apostles were eating at the Last Supper. We’ll have lamb, some kind of flat bread, haroseth, ‘bitter herbs’ (usually just salad with parsley), some kind of mock wine, etc. We’ve been doing this as long as I personally can remember, and I find it so special. (It’s also very cool to then hear the original Passover meal described in the readings at the Holy Thursday Mass, and hear the very things we just ate!)

A tradition from when I was a kid

~ I have fond memories of our Easter egg hunts as kids. Our parents would scatter our Easter eggs over the yard, and along with the usual chocolate and whatnot, spread throughout several of the eggs (they were the plastic kind that you can store things in) there would be slips of paper with a line of writing on them, which, when put together, had a poem (written by my wonderful mother) which contained a clue to finding the Easter baskets. This was a lot of fun…and now that I look back on it, I really appreciate the amount of effort that must have gone into it. (Thanks, Mom and Dad!)

A tradition I would like to start

~ you’ve probably heard of the Stations of the Cross, a prayer to meditate on the Passion of Our Lord. Well, the last year or so I’ve been hearing about a new devotion, the Stations of Light, which is structured in the same way but meditating on the Resurrection. I haven’t done it yet, but I really like the idea and I think it would be lovely to start doing that every Easter.

Well, happy Easter once again! Are you having a good Easter? What are some of your favorite Easter traditions?