My grandson and I painted ceramics this week. We painted a decorated Easter egg, two little ceramic Easter baskets, and an Easter egg with a chick sticking his head out. Engraved on the egg were the words “Just out” which my grandson colored different colors.
I dug out my Easter decorations—candle Easter eggs, fake green grass and all the little dollar figurines I bought last year, depicting rabbit mothers pushing rabbit babies in carriages, rocking rabbit babies in cradles, around decorated houses and toadstools.
When I was a kid, we melted dye tablets in cups of water, then dipped our boiled eggs in them. Sometimes we used a candle to draw on our eggs so that after they were dipped in dye, they had swirls on them.
We hunted Easter eggs in our house the whole week before Easter, hiding them in behind the books or under the bed.
Then on Easter after church, we hunted eggs with the rest of our Sunday School classes. We carried our Easter baskets to collect chocolate eggs and marshmallow chicks and bunnies. We wore our best dresses and new shiny shoes to church.
We raised chickens so we knew about the chicks pecking their way out of the eggshell. We held baby chickens, but then we had to let them grow up and not be our pets anymore. We saw rabbits around our backyard, in the garden, and on the farm, but we didn’t really raise rabbits as pets..
We learned songs at school about Easter. “Here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail” (written by Gene Autry, by the way) but we knew that Easter was not about the Easter bunny.
Come Easter Sunday morning, we heard again the story of how Jesus Christ died on the cross, was buried in a garden tomb, but the stone was rolled away by an angel and Christ arose.
And then we sang, “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, Hallelujah, Christ arose.”
Easter is always all about Jesus Christ and His resurrection; the rest is just fun for the kids.