Advent and Christmas have always been my favorite season in the church for as long as I can remember. And I have also been disappointed in myself that I didn’t like Good Friday and Easter as much, because that should be a big deal for Christians.
I realized that a big part of it was that we have a lot of kid-friendly imagery, teaching aides, and calendar progressions that make the buildup for Christmas special and exciting for kids. When we set up decorations ahead of Christmas, get out the stockings and the tree, light the advent candles or proceed through the advent calendar, all of that serves to build expectation and excitement for the joy of Christmas Day. The highlight for a small child is probably the appearance of presents and then the opening of them. But everything that comes before Christmas itself adds to the weight of that day. We have Easter baskets and egg hunts and the like on Easter, which make the day itself exciting, but those come quickly and are over quickly. My experience growing up of the season itself, particularly the Lenten progression to Holy Week and Easter, had no weight to it like Advent and Christmas had.
So I thought, “Why not make a simple Advent-like practice for Lent for my family?” We looked online and couldn’t find much historical practice to draw from (other than Fastelavn, but that is more pre-Lent), so I thought I would just come up with something.
So the following is what my family now does. Feel free to adapt it for your own family!
The main idea is to count the weeks of Lent leading up to Easter, not with Advent Candles, but with Lenten Piñatas, and not with the decoration of a Christmas tree but with a large indoor wooden cross. Lent is a season that focuses on our spiritual warfare against the forces of darkness in self-discipline and hope toward the resurrection as we daily take up our own crosses and follow Jesus. The piñatas each represent aspects of the darkness that we fight against: the devil, the world, our sinful flesh, and death. Throughout Lent, we see those piñatas come up over our fireplace (in expectation of final judgment when they will all be burned). During Holy Week, those evil piñatas are nailed to the cross. Then on Good Friday we break apart the piñatas. But there’s nothing of worth inside these evil piñatas. But then on Easter morning, we find our Easter baskets filled with candy hanging from that same cross! The remains of the old evil piñatas will come out again on Ascension Day, when we’ll burn them all in a bonfire outside to remember that the final judgment and deliverance will come when Christ returns in the same way as He ascended.
Lent + Easter Calendar Plan
Here is the practice laid out week by week:
- Ash Wednesday: Raise the cross
- A wooden cross that you can nail things to, wherever you would normally put up a Christmas tree, and up to about the same size as a Christmas tree. (You might even use a Christmas tree stand to hold it up.)
- I took some fallen maple branches from our yard that God provided and I cut them to make the shaft and crossbar for a cross about 5.5′ high and 3′ wide. I carved some notches in the pieces to help them fit together, and I got some sisal rope from Menards for $4 to tie them together. The pieces sit compactly disassembled in our garage when not in use.
- 1st S. in Lent: Kids get out Sword of the Spirit toys (optionally rest of armor of God also).
- Instruct kids to use it responsibly in service to God and in love for their neighbor against the forces of darkness.
- Kids can keep these with them throughout the season as their special Lenten equipment for spiritual warfare.
- Swords should be at least somewhat sturdy, as they will be used on Good Friday to break the piñatas.
- If a child is not old enough to responsibly wield a sword, they might still be able to use the rest of the armor of God in toy form during Lent.
- Ember days: (Wed + Fri + Sat after the 1st S. in Lent; traditional fasting days)
- Each person is to do 3 unprovoked and non-routine acts of kindness for other people on each day.
- Have family members ask each other what they did at the end of the day.
- Note that there are 4 Ember Day sets throughout the year where we do this part, not just for Lent. See Wikipedia for more info if you are curious.
- 2nd S. in Lent: Add Sinful Flesh piñata above fireplace (see below for details on piñata making).
- 3rd S. in Lent: Add Sinful World piñata above fireplace.
- 4th S. in Lent: Add Devil piñata above fireplace.
- 5th S. in Lent: Add Death piñata above fireplace.
- “The last enemy to be destroyed is death.”
- Holy Week:
- Palm Sunday: Decorate the cross.
- Add respectful and somber decorations to the cross to mark Christ’s triumphal entry but also His heading toward His passion.
- You could drape a classic purple sash over the crossbar, lay palm branches around its base, or perhaps attach a crown of thorns to the top.
- (Read Mk. 11:1-11 for the day’s events.)
- Holy Monday: Nail the Flesh piñata to the cross (or tie it, but nailing is preferred).
- Remind kids how on Holy Monday Jesus cursed the fig tree that wouldn’t produce any food, symbolizing the fate of Jerusalem after it wouldn’t produce the fruits of the kingdom of God. He also cleansed the temple from those who misused it for selfish gain. (Read Mk. 11:12-19 for the day’s events.)
- Holy Tuesday: Nail the World piñata to the cross.
- Remind kids how on Holy Tuesday Jesus taught His disciples to forgive whenever they pray, if they had anything against anyone. On this day the Jewish leaders also challenged Jesus’ authority, which was from God, and Jesus taught the people with parables. (Read Mk. 11:20-39 (and chapters 12-13) for the day’s events.)
- Holy Wednesday: Nail the Devil piñata to the cross.
- Remind kids how on Holy Wednesday Judas did not resist the devil and agreed with the Jews to betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. (Read Mk. 14:1-11 for the day’s events.)
- Maundy Thursday: Nail the Death piñata to the cross.
- Remind kids how Jesus instituted the Lord’s Supper on Maundy Thursday as a means of giving us His own life in opposition to death. (Read Mk. 14:12-72 for the day’s events.)
- Good Friday: Use swords to break the piñatas off the cross and break them apart.
- Banish the piñata remnants to imprisonment in the garage.
- There is no candy inside these piñatas. Destroying sin isn’t always a pleasant task.
- Where is Jesus? Remind kids that Jesus became sin for us when he was nailed to the cross, and God gave Him the penalty that our sins deserve.
- (Read Mk. 15 for the day’s events.)
- Palm Sunday: Decorate the cross.
- Easter Sunday: Kids wake to find Easter baskets hung from a redecorated cross where the piñatas had been
- Redecorate the cross w/ Easter decorations, like leaves, flowers, a white cloth sash, or perhaps a regal crown.
- (Read Mk. 16:1-13 for the day’s events.)
- 2nd S. of Easter: Take down the cross.
- Or possibly leave it up until Pentecost, but the idea is to link the removal of the cross with the traditional reading for this Sunday, where the disciples in the upper room recognize that Jesus is no longer dead. (Read Jn. 20:26-31 for the day’s events.)
- Ascension Day: Burn the remains of the old piñatas (in order) in a bonfire outside.
- This serves as an illustration and reminder of the final judgment when Christ will return in the same way as He departed, and all evil will finally be burned up. (Read Acts 1:6-11 for the day’s events.)
Piñatas
- Piñatas are small paper bags, decorated w/ crayon/marker drawings of the evil figure in question, and stuffed with newspaper.
- Candy is NOT placed inside the evil piñatas. You don’t want to teach kids that they can get good things from these. 😉
- We just use small 6″ wide paper bags from our grocery store checkout lane.
- The piñata can be decorated afternoon of the Sunday you hang them up, or maybe the day before.
- Hang them behind the fire grate, but high enough to be visible, if possible, to show that they are destined for burning and judgment. (Rather than the way we usually hang stockings for Christmas, where the stockings sit on the safe, exterior side of the fire grate.) If your fire grate doesn’t have space above and behind, where the piñatas can be both visible and in the line of fire, then you’ll have to choose between visibility and symbolism. Do whatever makes sense in your context.
- The figure for each week (Flesh, World, Devil, Death) is roughly picked to align with the traditional Sunday readings for their respective weeks.
- Tell kids that we especially focus on resisting the figure in question, in love, for each week (Flesh, World, Devil, Death) in our spiritual warfare during the week that they come up. But we should also keep up the good fight in future weeks too. See how in the week that the World figure comes up, the Flesh is still hanging around to fight too.
The design is to do just a single piñata per week, even if you have multiple kids, but there’s no reason you couldn’t do one per person each week if you wanted. (A larger family could end up with the fun visual of seeing how much sin can pile up on that cross at the end of Lent!) If doing that, I would recommend to be sure to use different colors for each week’s piñata, such as Yellow for Flesh, Green for World, Red for Devil, and Black for Death, so as to help distinguish the passage of time for each week.
But make it your own! There’s lots of room for customization.
Let me know if you try it and how it goes!