Holy Week at Home
We are a child psychologist and a progressive Christian pastor. Between our two families we have four kids ranging in age from ten to eighteen. Add in the kids from Ellen’s practice and Molly’s parish, and several hundred kids ranging in age from newborn to twenty-two are a regular part of our intimate lives.
Like their adults living through the COVID-19 pandemic, the kids we know and love are losing track of time without the structure of school and the differentiation of weeks and weekends. They are missing out on rites of passage and important rituals. Namely, this week: Ellen’s 10-year-old keeps asking for reminders of how many weeks until Easter--with a sly wondering-aloud if the Easter Bunny will still come in the midst of a pandemic.
Yes. The Easter Bunny will find a way to come. So far, we believe bunnies to be immune. The even better news is that Jesus is immune too. Even with our churches closed to incarnational gatherings this Easter, the Resurrection will happen regardless. In fact, it already has, and is in evidence all around us. We see it in the later sunsets and in the budding and blooming spring flowers; we also see it in the budding friendships between neighbors and the epidemic of altruism that has bloomed in the wake of the virus’s path.
One of the major threads in our book Bless This Mess: A Modern Guide to Faith and Parenting in a Chaotic World is that parents are their kids first and best spiritual teachers. You are the one they will come to with big questions about life, death, God, faith and doubt. You are the one they will need when life throws more at them than they can handle (e.g. a global pandemic). You are, in fact, their first God figure (don’t let it go to your head).
Alas, many of us were taught that our connection to God goes only through religion and its institutions. We were taught to rely on the Church and its ordained leaders for legitimate rites, rituals and celebration. But rites, rituals and celebrations are not the exclusive province of the paid religious professionals. Families have been celebrating holy days and holidays at home for centuries, often in times of isolation due to war, persecution, plagues and pandemics--and we can join their number now, as Holy Week approaches.
The great thing about Holy Week is that it provides ample opportunities for embodied spiritual practice that kids love and totally “get,” and that can easily be done outside of church. Rituals and routines are particularly essential right now to our and our children’s mental and spiritual health.
Of course, there are some hard and frightening themes in Holy Week. Jesus goes from being king of the hill and the darling of all to being betrayed, abandoned by his friends, tortured and murdered in the space of 5 days. All of us, even the youngest children, have dark thoughts, perhaps even more so now during a scary and uncertain time. Holy Week may prove to be cathartic, a chance to unpack some of our darkest thoughts, worries and feelings, and provide an opportunity to have powerful conversations with your kids about power and privilege, jealousy, friendships that have soured, death and what’s beyond it, and many other topics that feel taboo or hard to bring up. Then again, you may have a sensitive child, or a child at a sensitive age, and will need to modify your observance so that it supports their spiritual and emotional life and doesn’t permanently put them off the incredible story of Jesus’ last week.
Here is a short list of EASY, few- or no-props things you can do with your kids to really observe Holy Week.
[Martha Stewart, get thee behind us!]
Palm Sunday:
Read Matthew 21:1-11. Strip greenery from plants in your yard and neighborhood (or pick up windfall), make a “red carpet” of coats and march around the outside of your house or in your living room, singing Hosanna! at the top of your lungs. Give your children donkey rides around the house.
Talk about how Jesus played dress up at being a king--and how that made the real leaders mad. Talk about the leadership qualities Jesus had that made him better than the actual “kings,” then and now.
Maundy Thursday:
Read the Gospel of John, chapter 13. Teach kids about the story of footwashing and the Great Commandment Jesus gave the disciples to “love one another as I loved you.” Do a footwashing at home with a footbath, spending time really soaping, drying and moisturizing each person’s feet with tender care. It’s a great opportunity to feed the body’s “skin hunger” at a socially-distanced time, even, or especially, with teens.
Read the Gospel of Luke, chapter 22, about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, feeling lonely, and the betrayal by his friends. Visit a cold garden and have the family sit scattered around, giving each person some alone time.
Read Matthew 26:17-30. Have an Agape Meal (Love Feast) at home: an unconsecrated Communion that can be done by anybody. Take delicious bread and grape juice or pomegranate juice (tangy!) and share it in love, remembering that the last thing Jesus longed to do in his earthly life was eat with the people he loved best.
Write short rhyming poems or haikus about the scripture stories at the end of each Gospel: the foot-washing, the Last Supper, Judas Iscariot’s betrayal of Jesus to the higher-ups, the desertion of Jesus by all his friends, Jesus alone and crying in the Garden, the arrest of Jesus, his cross-examination by the authorities, his crucifixion, his forgiveness of his enemies from the cross as he was dying, his crying out to God asking why God had forsaken him, his giving his mother and his best friend to each other, knowing he would no longer be able to care for either one.
Good Friday:
All four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) have a version of the Good Friday story. Read it aloud, taking turns reading. If your kids have stamina, compare the different versions to see what details are different.
Have a ‘cold food day’ or a day without hot water, because the light has gone out of the world - this can also be an alternative to fasting.
Have younger children draw pictures of the stations of the cross, the fourteen moments on Jesus’s last/worst day, and put them around the house.
Hang up printouts of great Good Friday-themed religious artwork for older children: crucifixions, pietas.
Learn how to make the sign of the cross: forehead-heart-shoulder-shoulder--even for Protestants, it is strangely comforting.
Venerate the cross by putting one in a low place where they can see it, kneel before it and pray.
Look for a virtual walking of the stations of the cross, like this one.
Holy Saturday:
Prepare Easter outfits lovingly and carefully. Let’s get out of our PJs and dress up even though we have nowhere to go!
Prepare special food, lovingly and carefully.
Paint eggs and talk about how eggs are like Jesus’ tomb: they look cold and dead but there’s something with life, or that gives us life, inside them. Paint them with Easter words and symbols: “God is alive,” “Jesus is risen,” “Alleluia,” empty tomb, empty cross, flowers, butterfly, lamb of God.
Hang hollowed-out eggs from the chandelier: this is what was hung on a tree. It is Jesus, but resurrected!
Holy Saturday is about baptism. Tell each of your children all about their baptism day: show them pictures, call their godparents. Talk about baptism as a new life every day, every morning when they wake up, a chance to let go of all their old mistakes and start fresh.
Read the story about the women going to the tomb to anoint Jesus' body for burial (Luke 24:1-3; John 20). Walk an outdoor labyrinth. Put an egg in the middle of it. You have found your way to the heart of all things. Put your nose into a bag of spices, like the women were going to use on Jesus’ body. Rub some on your skin.
Easter Sunday:
Read one of the resurrection stories. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John all have them. All four versions feature women prominently, and in John’s version Mary Magdalene is the star.
Make dressing a sacramental act—God is making all things new! In our house, the children always get new underwear and socks in their Easter baskets.
Wake up early and watch the sunrise. Sing an Easter classic (like this one or this one) and say a prayer of thanksgiving for all the blessings of being alive.
Easter baskets: fill them less with toys and candy, and more with experiences and relationships (coupons for post-pandemic outings, hugs and kisses), signs of life (seeds, tools for digging in the garden, binoculars and bird books), and religious jewelry.
Bless your own holy water (using the Rite of Blessing) or ignite holy fire (light a little votive candle), and put it in a central place in your home.
Hide one of your Alleluia Easter eggs in your home. Whoever finds it gets a prize.
Hide a fruit basket/fresh muffin basket in the home, and share it for breakfast.
Gather bells, one for each person, and ring them every time you say the word Alleluia
‘Play God’ by making a donation that will, in effect, prevent a death: to public health agencies, homelessness service providers and others
Easter Monday:
Take a ‘well day:’ go to virtual Catholic mass, visit a body of water and splash each other. Read the Gospel of John, chapter 21, and have an outdoor picnic (with sardines!).
Read the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24:13-35, the story about Jesus appearing suddenly to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and take an “Emmaus walk” with your children, asking them, “Where do you see God here and here and here? In whom or what do you see God? Is God appearing in any surprising ways?
A great children's books to teach the story of Easter is: The Tale of the Three Trees.
Life under social distancing doesn’t mean losing out on the holy roller coaster this year, and the pandemic doesn’t have to have all the glory next week. Remember that Jesus said “whenever two or more are gathered in my name, I am among you.” You are your child’s first and best spiritual teacher, and you already have everything you need to make this Holy Week a meaning-filled one your children will always remember--as well as remind your whole family that you live inside of a story much larger than the one you are living right now.
Peace,
Molly and Ellen