Time for Mental Areobics!

Easter. Who decided that for easter we should all eat jelly beans and chocolate and dye hardboiled eggs? Holiday's that stem from religous tradition usually can be tied (or stretched) back to some doctrine or scripture or something. Like Christmas for instance. I have a whole sheet of paper with the symbols of Christmas and what they represent. Gifts represent the ultimate gift, candy canes represent the shephards canes etc. But with easter . . . where did all this stuff come from? The holiday has strayed completely from the doctrine that it celebrates.

I'm not saying I don't enjoy easter the way it is, and we are not one of those families that has to celebrate every holiday that falls on a sunday the saturday before. I would just like to be able to tie the holiday back in with the spiritual celebration.

I work in nursery in our ward and it was my turn to teach the lesson. And given I only get about 2-4 minutes of the kids attention to teach before they want the color sheet. But it really hit me on Sunday, trying to explain to 2 year olds what easter really was. I was excited because it was my turn to teach the lesson. Easter would be an easy subject. Let me tell you it was not easy. First of all 2 year olds don't know the meaning of death. Let alone resurection. Every single one of them knew who the easter bunny was, but they didn't understand that easter was connected to Jesus. They just looked at me all confused, you were just talking about easter where does Jesus fit in?

Now maybe they are just a little young to understand, I'm sure in a couple of years they'll all be trained to say that Easter is because of Jesus. My question is how can we help them connect the two events the commercial and the spiritual Easter?

Let's see the Jellybeans represent . . .
The chocolate represents . . .
Colored eggs represent . . .

Hmmm . . . This might take a little creative thinking and stretching.