The Book of New Family Traditions (30 page)

Vatentine Craft: What’s Sweet About You Poster

This is like giving your kid a giant Valentine card, but much more personal. Make one for each child. If you’re having a special dinner, you could bring the posters out then. Or prop them up against the kitchen chairs, so your kids find them when they come downstairs to breakfast or come home from school.

Materials

Large sheets of poster board in white, pink, or red (one sheet for each poster)

Red and pink construction paper

Scissors

Glue

Small Valentine candies, such as chocolate hearts wrapped in foil

Markers

Instructions

Cut nine to twelve hearts from the construction paper. The hearts should be about four inches high and three inches wide. On each heart, write one trait you love about that child’s nature. Make it specific, focusing on positive aspects of his or her personality. Also, praise behavior you’d like to reinforce, such as putting away toys or progress in potty training.

Across the top of the poster, write “What’s Sweet About (Child’s Name).” Glue the hearts to the board, but just put glue on the bottom edges and up the sides of the hearts. Leave the top open, so they work like pockets. Put a piece of Valentine candy in each pocket.

First Day of Spring

The official beginning of spring, March 20 or 21, is marked by the vernal equinox, when the sun crosses the equator from south to north. Some fresh ways to mark this joyful transition:

Plant Flowers

Kids love to dig in the dirt, and if the weather is bad, you simply plant in pots indoors. Best bet for small hands: nasturtium seeds, which are about the size of peas. Bulbs are also an excellent choice. My birthday is in March, and the year I turned fifty, I planted fifty daffodil bulbs by the birdbath in my backyard: I wanted to be able to see them from the kitchen table when they bloomed.

First Picnic of the Year

The Suks of Evanston, Illinois, have a picnic on the first day of spring, no matter the weather. Letitia Suk prepares picnic food such as deviled eggs and iced tea and packs it in the family car along with a Frisbee, a baseball, and a bat. Their destination is the nearest park. Even if they have to eat in the car, trek through snow, and wear gloves, they throw out the first ball of the season.

Paint the Rocks

The landscape of winter is drab and bare, but colors will burst forth in the spring. One way to symbolize and celebrate that transformation is to color your surroundings. If it’s not raining, grab some washable poster paints in primary colors and some big paintbrushes. Pour small amounts of paint into paper cups for portability, and go paint any rocks you’ve got on your property. Paint pictures of flowers, write words, splash and drip like Jackson Pollock. My son absolutely loved doing this: I remember him painting words, listing his favorite toys at the time, like Legos. If you haven’t got rocks, paint the driveway or use colored chalk. You might want to add favorite warm-weather activities, like kite flying or bubble blowing, and mix up the season’s first pitcher of lemonade.

How to Make a Bird’s Nest Basket

Birds flying north after the winter are looking for material to build their nests. You can help them and attract birds to your yard, by supplying nest-making material in an inviting way.

Materials

Plastic berry baskets from the supermarket (use the ones your blueberries came in, or ask the produce department for some extras)

Short pieces of string or ribbon

Feathers in muted colors (birds won’t take anything in a bright color that might attract predators’ attention)

Twigs and leaves

Instructions

Simply arrange the nest materials in the basket, then tie string or ribbon to the four corners and use string to hang the basket from a tree branch, preferably one you can see from inside the house. Then watch birds as they swoop over to the basket and grab a scrap of ribbon to use in their nest building elsewhere.

Celebrate Big Bird’s Birthday

Every year on the first day of spring, Big Bird celebrates his birthday, and he always turns six. If your kids love
Sesame Street
, you can adapt the idea of Susan Lynch of Merchantville, New Jersey, and mark this occasion at home. Her kids always make a cake with sprinkles on top to represent birdseed. They invite friends and hand out party favors like pinwheels or flowers. There are plenty of great Sesame Street and Muppet CDs, if you’re looking for perfect sing-along songs, though “Happy Birthday” is a must.

Vernal Equinox Fun Facts

Show your kids the equator on a globe and help them research what is actually happening to Earth on this day, when theoretically the day is divided equally into twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness. Then, explore the myth that only on the vernal equinox can a person balance a raw egg on its end: Actually, you should be able to do this any day of the year, but it takes patience!

Passover

The oldest holiday in Judaism, Passover celebrates the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt some 4,000 years ago. The observance lasts eight days, but the highlight is the seder, or ritualized family dinner, that begins the holiday. Of all the Jewish holidays, this one is of special interest to Christians because the Last Supper is believed to have been a Passover seder.

Like other major religions, Judaism remains strong partly because of its effectiveness in using holiday rituals to teach the tenets and history of the faith to children. And one of the great strengths of the Passover seder is the flexibility of this tradition: Families feel free to riff on the basic structure and make it their own. And because it’s about storytelling and not just prayer, it can be made especially appealing to children. A seder is guided by a Haggadah, a book that contains prayers, readings, songs, and stories about the holiday, but there are also many different versions to pick from. Here are some of the ways families go about making seders memorable and fun:

Emphasizing Freedom

Passover is a great time to talk about the joy as well as the responsibilities of freedom, then and now. Laurie Salen, a social worker in San Francisco, has all the people who come to her seder bring a symbol of their own liberation to put on the table. One-brought termination papers from a hated job. A workaholic friend brought her dancing shoes, because she had finally fulfilled a fantasy of working less overtime and taking dance classes. A guest with AIDS brought some of the drugs that keep him free to enjoy life. At other seders, people discuss countries in the world today where the citizens have limited freedom.

Kid-Friendly Passover

Julie Stockler’s seders with her two daughters are especially playful. She has been known to use troll dolls to act out the story of the holiday (the troll with a star in his hand was God), and she always has a “movie night ’ the week before so her girls can watch
The
Ten Commandments because ”the plagues are so vivid.” In trying to dress like ancient Hebrews, the family has wrapped themselves in bedsheets for the seder, and once ate while lying down. While slaves, the Hebrews were not allowed to recline while eating, a position reserved for free people, so some seders are eaten while reclining.

Fleeing Egypt

At the appropriate moment during the seder, the Brosbe family of Santa Rosa, California, has one of the dinner guests ring the doorbell and run away, leaving a note on the front steps that says “
Get Out of Egypt Now
.” The family and their guests strap on backpacks and rush out the back door to march around the backyard singing a traditional Passover song.

Acting Out the Plagues

Many families get creative in depicting the ten plagues sent down by God when the pharaoh broke his repeated promises to free the Israelites. Some families take a blank roll of paper and tape it around the dining room like a mural, putting crayons on the table so the kids can draw each plague as it’s described. Some discuss how modern-day plagues affect the world, such as AIDS.

An Intellectual Seder

When the Weber family of Los Angeles sends invitations to thirty or more people three weeks before the holiday, many of the guests are sent a question to discuss during the seder. Sometimes an individual is asked to answer, and sometimes a whole family. Often the guests do research to prepare their responses, and some families choose to put on a rehearsed skit. The end result is a stimulating discussion that lasts for hours, and just being asked is considered an honor. Some questions are repeated most years, but there is usually at least one new one. Some questions asked in the past are:

1.
There is no mention of Moses in the Haggadah, despite his importance to the story: Prepare an argument to include Moses.

2.
What are ten plagues that threaten us today?

3.
There are four questions traditionally asked at a seder: Develop four others to share with the group.

The Weber seder is also a good example of how rituals must grow and change: Jerry Weber, a devout Jew fluent in Hebrew, started the family Passover tradition, but he was tragically murdered in 1989 in an ATM robbery in Los Angeles. His widow, Sally Weber, wasn’t at all sure she could carry on the tradition for their two daughters, because she didn’t grow up in a religious household and didn’t know Hebrew. After some studying and prodding by her daughters, she resumed holding the Seders at her home, with help. She found friends proficient in Hebrew willing to read those parts of the ceremony, and others who could carry a tune (unlike herself) to lead the songs. Much to her daughters’ delight, Sally hosts, develops the questions, and leads the evening.

Finding the Right Haggadah for Your Passover Seder

There are truly a staggering number of Haggadahs available, including medieval ones, cartoon ones, feminist ones, Orthodox ones, even one for Buddhists. Here are some of the more popular ones for different audiences, and you’ll find free ones online.

A Passover Haggadah
, by Elie Wiesel, combines a full-length seder text with historical and personal commentary by the Holocaust survivor and author.

Uncle Eli’s Special-for-Kids Most Fun Ever Under the Table Haggadah
, by Eliezer Lorne Segal, a colorful book that covers the basics, defines terms, and includes a text for the evening that is full of rhymes and cartoonlike photos.

A good website for those celebrating Passover with children is Torahtots.com/holidays/pesach.

Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families
, by Cokie and Steve Roberts, was created by the journalists based on their forty years of figuring out how to celebrate this holiday as a couple and a family: Cokie is Catholic and Steve says he was raised mostly as a “cultural Jew.”

Interfaith couples will also find a lot of thoughtful ideas on Passover and other Jewish holidays in the blog of Susan Katz Miller,
OnBeingBoth.wordpress.com
. (She was raised Reform Jewish but married a Protestant.)

Easter

Easter is the most important festival of the Christian church, and it celebrates the resurrection of Jesus after his crucifixion. The forty-day period leading up to Easter, called Lent, is generally a time of fasting, praying, and serious contemplation about suffering and the message God wanted to send with the death of Jesus. During Lent, devout Christians deprive themselves of things they especially enjoy, often foods like sweets or meat. Like the date for Passover, the date when Easter is celebrated changes every year: To find out when it will fall in the current year, check a calendar, whether online or on your wall.

Some people celebrate Easter strictly as a religious holiday, but even non-Christians often enjoy such fun and festive activities as outdoor egg hunts and Easter baskets. Here are some ideas that cover a range of ritual approaches.