Eggs in the Basement

I don't want Easter Sunday to be . . .

. . . just about candy,

but I do want it to be fun.

The third year we celebrated Holy Week,

we added Empty Tomb Rolls to Easter Sunday and it was a big hit,

but I still felt we needed something more.

After church today, I told the kids to grab Easter baskets and flashlights,

because we were going to have an egg hunt in the basement . . .

. . . with the lights out.

I'm sure we could come up with some symbolic reason for that rule,

but I mainly threw it in there to level the playing field for the younger kids.

I also told the egg hunters they could only go down one at a time (youngest to oldest), 

and when it was their turn to go, they had to recite an Article of Faith before heading downstairs.

It was pretty wild, but we liked the novelty of it.

I wanted the activity to have a spiritual element

(and I didn't want to give my kids too much candy),

so I filled twelve of the eggs with items that represented 

some part of Jesus's Holy Week story

(and dollar bills, 'cuz kids like those even more than jelly beans).

Every time one of the kids opened a numbered egg,

we talked about what the item symbolized, 

and a lesson we could take from that part of Jesus's story.

For example, the empty twelfth egg symbolizes Jesus's empty tomb,

and the hope He gives us that we will live again too someday.

It also reminds us that since He conquered death to save us,

He is powerful and loving enough help us with any challenge we face. 

I may ask each egg hunter to talk about just one symbol each next year, 

so the discussion doesn't feel quite so much like "Holy Week pop quiz time,"

but I think the activity as a whole has potential.

It has all the elements of a good holiday tradition:

family, fun, food/prizes, 

and an invitation to think about higher and holier things.