Family

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As Easter approaches, the thoughts of Christians of all ages turn to celebrating the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The thoughts of parents, grandparents, and children also turn to Easter eggs and Easter egg hunts. Trust me, I know because I was a kid once, and I’m now a grandparent with seven grandkids. For me Easter egg hunts were always more than just an Easter egg hunt, it was a time to teach the grandkids about Jesus.

Real Eggs Vs Plastic Eggs
Today, too many parents, and grandparents take the easy, less messy, way out, buy those cheap, hollow plastic eggs, and stuff them with pieces of candy. Perhaps using plastic eggs is more economical than buying real eggs and dying them, they do cost less than real eggs, and the dye used to color them with. The plastic eggs can be repeatedly for years to come too, but using plastic eggs short changes our children and grandchildren on learning the rich Christian traditions involved with using real eggs. You miss the opportunity to teach during the preparation of the Easter eggs. There will be no time to teach once the hunt begins.

A Myriad of Christian Traditions
Throughout recorded history, Christians have used Easter eggs to teach their children about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Although, originally, the egg was the pagan symbol for “New Life,” the new life that comes from nature is cycles of renewal. The Easter egg took on a completely new set of meanings for the Christians. For Christians, the hard eggshell was symbolic of the sealed tomb of Jesus, the cracking of that shell symbolizing Jesus rising from the dead. Since many forms of life begin as an egg, for the early Christians, the egg reminded them that Jesus truly was their source for new life spiritually. Learning those traditions and teaching those traditions to our children and grandchildren will deepen their grasp on our Christian beliefs and help them develop a closer, more joy filled walk with our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We will have room to explore only a few of those traditions in this article.

The Shed Blood of Jesus
The early Christians living in Mesopotamia were the first to use Easter eggs as symbols of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection. They were the first to dye eggs red to symbolize the shed blood of Jesus Christ and the power of that shed blood to give sinners new life in Christ. The Mesopotamian Christians blessed those red eggs, and the priests of some orthodox churches still bless those red eggs today during Paschal (Easter) vigil services on the night before Easter Sunday. The teaching opportunity here is that you can explain how Jesus loved us so much that He willing went to the cross and shed His blood to pay for our sins so that we might have forgiveness and eternal life. I like to go one-step further and set the eggs we dye red into the folds of a braided bread cross; the red dyed eggs symbolize the bloodstains on the cross.

The Pysanky Eggs
The Pysanky eggs are a multicolored egg representing “Pysanky” art that originated in the Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. Pysanky art used waxed drawings and writing on eggs layered between different colored dyed layers. Traditional Pysanky colors to represent the different faith concepts related to Easter. White represented purity, yellow represented light and joy, orange represented strength and endurance, red the passion of Jesus on the cross, green represented hope and spiritual growth, blue represented spiritual health, brown represented earth, and black represented eternity. Between the dyed layers, phrases like “Christ is risen” and pictures like pictures of ladders were used. As you and your kids create these works of art you can use the time to discuss how God works in our lives.

Create Easter egg Symbols of our Faith
We can create symbols of our faith by drawing symbols on the eggs before we dye them. Cover the drawings with wax before dying them so the area behind the drawings stayed on a white background. Symbolically a “fish” represents Christianity, “birds” represent hope, “Evergreen trees” and “ribbons” represent eternal life, “sun and stars” represent spiritual growth, “flowers” represent joy, “triangles” represent the trinity, and “crosses” represent Jesus’ great sacrifice for our sins.

A Place for Plastic Eggs
Now is the time for those hollow plastic Easter Eggs that you bought at the dollar store. Create a multicolored Easter egg tree to represent the empty tomb of the risen Christ. Personally, I prefer creating an Easter egg tree the way we did it when I was a kid using real eggs. To use real eggs you need to make small holes in the two ends of each egg and then blow the raw egg out of the shell. For health, reasons use a straw between your lips and the eggshell when blowing the liquid egg from its shell.

The old egg Knocking Game
This is a two-player game enjoyed by adults and children alike, but too few people play it correctly today. The correct way to play it is for each player to shout out “Christ is risen” while knocking his or her eggs together. The contestant whose intact egg breaks open his or her opponents egg is considered the winner, the broken open egg represents Jesus’ empty tomb on Easter morning.

Easter egg gifts
I think that one of the reasons so many parents and grandparents have switched to plastic eggs is that their kids and grandkids made themselves sick from eating all the eggs. The Early Christians had a better way to handle that problem; they made up gift baskets and gave them to charity. We need to go back to using real eggs and adopt their idea of donating the majority of the left over eggs to the needy—pray for God to show you who your eggs should go to. For years, we have made up small Easter decorated bag of eggs and then take them to the inner city parks where the homeless gather and hand them out with a tract of the Gospel of John tucked in among the eggs. Pray over you Easter egg gifts and the Holy Spirit will direct you to whom He wants you to share them with.

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