Easter Crafts

You hear a lot of back-and-forth about "the True Meaning" of Easter at this time of year (and likewise at Christmas), and it's obviously a subject everyone has to do some thinking about when planning celebrations for their own families. My own philosophy was influenced by one of my favorite teachers at BYU, Wilfred Griggs. He spent a class period discussing so-called "secular" symbols of Christmas; their origins and how they could actually be tied back to Jesus Christ in various ways. I came away with the impression (though I don't know if he said this specifically) that it was much more effective to find ways to link holiday symbols to Christ than to simply discard these symbols or dismiss them as "just pagan imports" or whatever.

In other words, since what a given symbol MEANS is largely of my own mental construction anyway (i.e. a symbol has little meaning for me until I learn/absorb that meaning), why not use cultural symbols, along with religious symbols, to remind our family of Christ? So that, for instance, we learn how the Christmas Tree or the Santa Claus story can be seen as, not a replacement of Christ, but as a reminder/type of Him? Not a unique approach, I realize, but it has helped inform our family's thinking about holidays.

Anyway, as we learned about Easter's history, it was interesting to see how even the "pagan" Easter traditions (the ones tied back to the fertility godess, etc.) can teach us truths about the gospel, and remind us of the resurrection, new life, and renewal that Christ brings.

We did various Easter crafts during the week---these cute little chicks were easy enough, and

also these fwuffball chickies, which we just made up (fwuffballs + beady eyes + paper beaks + pipe cleaners, obviously).

We made these Speckled Easter Egg Truffles to eat, which were quite delicious. I guess I didn't take any pictures. Actually it seems I hardly took pictures of anything we did this week! I kept forgetting.

We made this "Christ ascending" craft (easy and cute)

And these "empty tomb" posters

These curly birds are also cute (we didn't make them though)

These Egg Geodes were pretty fun to make, also. (Not really that "Easter-y," but they used eggshells, so . . . whatever.) We got our alum at the "Kitchen Kneads" store (kind of a food storage specialty place) and it was much cheaper than elsewhere. You need kind of a lot of it, so it's worth searching out a place like that. Alum is used for pickling things, I guess.

This is a video of how to do the same thing.