Easter Traditions

I've been reading a great book recently called Treasuring God in Our Traditions, by Noel Piper. The whole book describes how traditions remind us of the important things in our lives. People have traditions for all kinds of things...birthdays, Christmas, Easter, and other special or ordinary events, too. For example, my Great Grandpa Schindler began a tradition in his family to pray Psalm 121 before departing on a vacation. Now, three generations later, everyone in the family knows this short Psalm in the King James version of the Bible, and we say it when we leave on vacation. It reminds us that God is our Protector, and He will take care of us. It's not a Steer Clear of Accidents card, but a reminder of what we believe is important. So this book has been perfect for me now that we are beginning to establish traditions of our own as a little family of three.

So speaking of establishing new traditions, we adopted an Austrian Easter tradition this year. Austrians typically buy pussy willow branches and hang hand painted hollowed out eggs on them. They believe that if you receive a blessing with a pussy willow, your fields will be blessed in the coming year. Normally a blessing is given with palm branches on Palm Sunday, but since palms are not native in Austria, the pussy willow does the trick. So this year we went to an Easter market and bought our own set of eggs and willows for our own Easter tree.

One other thing we do on Easter Sunday morning is bake Empty Tomb Rolls. What are these? You take a large marshmallow (Jesus's body) and dip it in melted butter and then a mixture of cinnamon & sugar. Then, you wrap refrigerator roll dough (tomb) around the marshmallow and pinch it together so nothing leaks out. After that, you place it in a muffin tin along with the others, and bake. As the rolls bake, the marshmallow melts and disappears! So when you eat the rolls, there is only a hollow hole inside the roll...hence...the empty tomb! It's a fun and tasty reminder that Easter is really about Jesus being resurrected from the dead...what a huge gift!