My Top 7 Activities for a Christ-Centered Resurrection Sunday

We had a phenomenal Easter last year.  I really felt that all of our activities leading up to Resurrection Sunday were meaningful and helped prepare our hearts for celebrating our Savior.  After Easter, I wrote about my thoughts and my mom's reflections on our Easter, which you can read about here.  It was definitely a success, in that all of us felt significantly closer to Christ as we celebrated His resurrection.

Between Pinterest and the unending source of information called the internet, there are a ton of ideas out there about Resurrection Sunday.  But not all Easter activities are created equally.  When I'm planning out Easter, I try to consider the following questions:

1. What will it teach my children?
2. Is it age appropriate?
3. How much energy, effort, and money does it require?
4. And most importantly, will it honor God and foster a love for Christ? If the answer to this question is no, then it's not worth my limited energy and time. 

My Savior died for me.  He died for you too.  His death covers our sins completely so that we can be forgiven, and now we can know God and walk with Him daily.  Everything about Easter should point to the truth of the Gospel.  This is the most important holiday for a Christian.  Without Easter, without the cross, Christmas is meaningless.

With that in mind, I'm sharing my list of the top 7 activities for celebrating the death and resurrection of Christ.

1.  Meaningful time with God

It all starts with you and your heart, mama.  If there's ever a week to skip out on your time with the Lord, this ain't it.  On your own, and perhaps with the kids too, read the story of the crucifixion all during the week leading up to Easter, Holy Week.  John Piper has a new free e-book of devotional readings for Holy Week that I'm curious to look at this year, Love to the Uttermost.

2.  Playdough Mountain

Like many of my holiday traditions, I stole this idea from Noel Piper's Treasuring God in Our Traditions, which is now available in a free pdf form here.  Essentially, you follow her recipe for making and baking a clay mountain and then make pipe cleaner figures to represent Jesus and other Biblical people.  All during Holy Week, I used the characters to tell stories from scripture about Christ, until finally, we hung our pipecleaner Jesus on the cross on Good Friday.  Later that day, he was buried in the tomb.  Isabelle asked about Jesus on Saturday, but he was still in the tomb.  When she woke up on Sunday morning, I told her that we needed to check on Jesus.  When she walked into the living room, she saw him standing triumphant over the grave and all of his friends were leaping for joy.  My 3 year old then ran through the house, proclaiming that "Jesus is alive!  Jesus is alive!"  

Jesus, teaching the multitudes on our playdough mountain.

Last year's playdough mountain.

This year, we combined our playdough mountain with the idea of a Resurrection garden that I've seen floating around Pinterest.  Essentially, we just put it in a terra cotta tray with some dirt and planted grass around it.  

3.  Resurrection Eggs

I've written about these before, but we really love them.  They're a tangible way for you to share the story with your children and if you pull them out weeks before Easter, your older pre-school children will know it so well that they can tell your younger ones what each object represents.  

4.  Resurrection Rolls

We made these this week and will make them again next week.  They take almost no prep time but are yummy and a great way to get your kids excited about the empty tomb, the heart of the Easter story.  If you're not familiar with resurrection rolls, you take a marshmallow "Jesus," roll him in butter "embalming oils," roll him in a cinnamon sugar mixture to represent the spices used for burial, and then wrap him in a crescent roll "burial cloth."  Once you bake all of your rolls, you'll open the rolls up to show the kids that the tomb is empty.  Why? Because Jesus is alive!  

5.  Celebrate Good Friday Appropriately

For years, our church has encouraged a fast of some sort on Good Friday, whether it's a food fast or a media fast.  We can grieve our sin and reflect on how the disciples would've felt on that long Friday and Saturday, when they thought all was lost.  In the past, we've also had a Good Friday worship service too, though this year, we're forgoing all of that for a Passover Dinner together on Thursday, which I'm excited about.  A Messianic Jew is coming to explain the dinner to us.

6.  Easter Morning Worship Music

This will take only a few minutes of your time but can really set the tone for Resurrection Sunday.  After my kids discovered the playdough mountain and Jesus' victory over death, we sat in the living room as a family, worshipping together.  My husband had thoughtfully included modern versions of old hymns, newer worship songs, and some good ole southern Baptist hymns for my step-dad.  He had a gorgeous bass voice and he loved to sing those old hymns, so we included them in our playlist especially for Jerry.

7.  Sunday Morning Worship Service

If you skip out on Sunday morning worship, what's the point of Easter?  I want to join my church family in celebrating Christ's resurrection from the grave.

A few of my other favorite things to do are act out Jesus' triumphant entry on Palm Sunday, watch the Jesus Film or some other appropriate movie about Christ's life and death, and make a lamb cake as a dessert for Easter Sunday.  There really are some great ideas out there, but I wanted to focus on a small, select few that take very little time and cane make a huge impact in increasing our family's love for the Lord.  I don't want to do anything that distracts from the message of Resurrection Sunday, that our Savior lives.

But does it really make a difference in our day to day life?  My sweet step-dad passed away suddenly in September, and if it weren't for the truth of Christ's resurrection, each and every day would be so heavy with grief for the man who was a dad to me for 18 years.  But my Savior, Jerry's Savior, lives, and he carries our burdens.  He provides strength to love and serve my family every day and gives me the hope of seeing Christ face-to-face one day.   We can lump Easter in with all of those other holidays, like Valentine's Day, just getting candy and doing a lot of things that don't really matter, or we can teach our children about our Savior, growing closer to Him as a family through a meaningful Resurrection Sunday.

What are some of your favorite ways to celebrate Christ on Easter Sunday?