Family Feast Day Fun: Holy Week & Easter

Feast day and liturgical season traditions help our kiddos understand the Faith in their everyday space in their everyday life. The symbols and colors of the Church during each liturgical season can be brought home in many ways. Foods, activities, crafts, the options are vast.

LOTS coming to celebrate!

*What season?  Triduum, Easter

*Home altar color? Red/Violet through Holy Week, White once Easter

Upcoming Feast Days:

April 6- Passion Sunday: The Sunday before Palm Sunday is when Passiontide begins. All the crucifixes and statues in the church are suddenly covered in purple fabric! It’s very noticeable to little ones especially. It is meant to increase our longing for the Lord and for the celebrations to come. To reflect this at home, we do the same. Years ago I picked up a yard or 2 or purple fabric at the store and cut it into pieces. So after mass this day we go home and start covering. Not ALL of the statues, but all of the most obvious ones around the house, especially the crucifixes.

April 13- Palm Sunday and HOLY WEEK: Holy Week is our most revered week of the year, these last days of suffering in the desert of Lent. They are days of encouraged quiet and extra chores in our house, offering it up, and preparing for the big weekend to come. Wear RED to Palm Sunday mass, and we like to put palm branches from the yard on the door.

*Triduum* (“tri-doo-um”)

               Holy Thursday: The night of the Last Supper. Sometimes we’ll try to recreate some of the dishes Jesus might have eaten that night of Passover, unleavened bread, lamb if we can, with sparkling juice for the kids instead of wine. This is a great opportunity to discuss the importance of Jesus instituting: the Eucharist as a Sacrament, and the gift of the priesthood. We will also wash each other’s feet and talk about Christ doing that with His Apostles.

               Good Friday: During Lent I hang bare sticks on the front door and tie a purple cloth to them. On Good Friday I exchange the purple for black, and we try to wear black this day too. The night before I prep Hot Cross buns, and they are baked this morning as our Good Friday breakfast. We usually attend the 3pm cross Veneration service (this is a great opportunity to point out the bare altar and no Consecration allowed to the kids), and from then on turn off any electric lights in our house and use candles instead until Saturday evening. We typically do Stations of the Cross at home (here is a printable set up) and then I let the kids watch a Jesus movie, like the Miracle Maker (usually on Prime). A simple meal of beans and rice will feed us at dinner, to conclude our day of fasting.

               Holy Saturday: This day we begin to decorate for Easter, which includes dyeing eggs and I will start to prep Easter food (being Italian I make Italian Easter bread, specifically). I opt for lamb decor in lieu of bunnies around the house. We also have a Resurrection version of a Nativity we put on the altar, and the kids get to roll away the stone the next morning. We specifically avoid Easter egg hunts on this day, see here for an explanation. This is the day of the “great silence” as we wait with bated breath for the triumph of the Resurrection.

April 20- EASTER: Mass is the single most important part of the day! The phrase “Alleluia” gets to be spoken and sung again, especially our wonderful Catholic tradition of greeting others by saying “Alleluia, He is risen”, which is responded to with, “He is risen, indeed, Alleluia!” We continue to say this the entirety of Easter’s 50 days after our daily meal prayer. Assumption usually holds an Easter egg hunt Easter morning, so we attend that when we go to mass. The Sacrifice Beans get replaced with jelly beans, and we do a family Easter basket with goodies for everyone to celebrate our joy in the Resurrection as a family. Here is a great list of goody ideas! Also, similar to Christmas, we have Easter themed books that are brought out just for this season, so our basket always holds a new one to add to the collection too.

Something I like to frequently remind the kids is that Easter is longer than Lent, being 50 days long instead of 40. This is a beautiful mantle décor idea which reminds us that it is STILL Easter. The octave of Easter is also special, which are the first 8 days, which includes a meat Friday!

April 27- Divine Mercy Sunday: The first Sunday following Easter is Divine Mercy Sunday. We make Divine Mercy “sundaes” this day, talk about St Faustina, and pray a Divine Mercy Chaplet.

We are the Domestic Church!

Feel free to email me for any printables, recipes, décor ideas, and more at Lindsay @ aldridge0222@gmail.com.