Hop. Hop. Hop. An Easter bunny hops into the room. She carries a basket with eggs in her hands. She wears a forced smile. Take a look closer. Her lower lip trembles. Tears well up in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” you dare to ask.
The words erupt with tears and snot. “I’m a fake! I’m a fraud! I try to do my part, but Easter is not about me!”
This scene is a skit we’ve done in children’s church more than once over the years. It’s also one we’ve gotten in trouble for before.
“How dare you tell kids there is no Easter bunny?!” more than one mom has complained.
Well, lady, I’ve wanted to say, If you’re going to bring you child to church at Easter there’s Someone more important we’re going to talk about—not the Easter bunny.
Just like at church, we ban the Easter bunny in our home. Here are a few reasons why:
- It’s all about Jesus! It’s about God’s Son sent to save our souls.
- We don’t want to distract our kids from the real message.
- Jesus is exciting enough.
- The best gifts aren’t hidden in plastic eggs.
- I don’t want to spend money on commercialism I don’t believe in.
What we do instead:
- We LOVE resurrection eggs! The tell the story of Christ’s death and resurrection in a fun an educational way.
- I buy some type of Christian Bible or book. Ones I like: The Tale of Three Trees, The Parable of the Lily, and The Best Thing About Easter.
- What I’m buying for my kids this year: God Gave Us Easter, ABC Easter, and What is Easter?
What we have planned:
- Decorating eggs
- Attending church
- Having a family dinner
- Doing resurrection eggs together
- Worshipping God as a family
How about you? How do you celebrate Easter?
Very good! It’s so nice to see there are like-minded people out there. Although we do, do an Easter egg hunt we strongly emphasis the true meaning of Easter. First, we do resurrection eggs (1 each day for 12 days before Easter). We read John 19, then make resurrection rolls. As they bake we read John 20. Church on Easter morning and dinner as a family. It’s all part of the MOST meaningful holiday! 🙂
Actually, we are going to do an Easter Egg hunt, too. Phil Vicher told a cool story on a recent Focus on the Family Broadcast about decorated eggs and why people would hunt for them at Spring. (For the protein after a long winter.) They did this tradition in Northern Europe long before Christianity came there, but it was the Christians who used the tradition to share the gospel. Interesting!
We have never been visited by the Easter bunny in our house. First the kids were so little they wouldn’t have known, then I didn’t think about any kind of treat until it was too late, and by then, a precedent had been set.
We do hunt for Easter eggs. But now that my guys are a little older (12, 9, and 6), they find the eggs in a matter of a few minutes. A couple of years ago, I wanted to to the egg hunt and make it last, but also point it all towards Christ and why we’re celebrating Easter. So I did an Easter egg treasure hunt. I found Bible verses and placed them in eggs. The Bible verse was the clue to where the next egg was. For example, “your word is a lamp into my feet” will take them to a lamp and “run the race that’s set before you” will correspond to the treadmill (or a pair of shoes), “in the beginning was the word” will take you to a bookshelf. I do about 12-15 eggs total. The last egg, the treasure, is an empty egg. Our treasure on Easter is the empty tomb.
We do fill some eggs with candy (love those jelly beans!), but it’s never done under the assumption that a bunny brought them!
Liza Lee, what a great idea!! I love that! Thank you so much for sharing.
I loved this, Tricia. Really good advice! We don’t do the Easter Bunny at our house, either. It’s all too confusing for kids. They need to know what is truth and what is not.
I agree!
I completely agree!! We do very similar to what you do. This is exactly why we don’t do Santa either. But even church people look at you like you’ve got three heads when you don’t do Santa. It’s the EXACT same reason we don’t do the Easter Bunny either! It’s about Jesus!
We don’t do Santa either … Jesus is cool all on his own!