Easter Eggs
Just those two words bring so many colors and memories to my mind. For years of my childhood I would stroll through the neighborhood with the other little kids stopping at three or four borrowed backyards. A week or so before Easter they were filled with neon colored eggs. First the 5 year olds, then the 6-9 year olds, then the 10 year and older kids. We would each sprint through our designated plot of land, grabbing little shiny eggs and stuffing them in our wicker baskets. It’s the kind of memory that feels like a 1900s television show.
My wife and I wanted to live this tradition in Madrid, so this year we put a plan in motion. Our church had 130 plastic eggs and we bought 70 more. We baked and decorated dozens of cookies shaped like rabbits, chicks, and more rabbits. We searched the candy aisles for tiny candies and we filled those 200 eggs with sugar.
There is this beautiful section of our local park called Pinar de las Siete Hermanas. It has massive pine trees that look like giant stalks of broccoli. There are no leaves until the tops and the upmost parts are full of dense green. We chose it for our hunt and picked out boundaries for our game.
The day of the event was trickier than we expected. I had to lug a table from our church to our home which would then be drug to the park. We needed drinks and snacks and blankets and none of us have a car. But everything worked out super well. We propped the table on the skeleton of our grocery getter cart. (If you are in the US you might wonder what in the world that is. If you live in Madrid you definitely own at least one.) We stuffed drinks and snacks into our second grocery getter cart and into the wheely backpack we bought Jeni for her last three months of pregnancy. Two of the girls from our youth-group met us at our bus stop and we strolled to and through the park like a migratory people group.
We hid soooo many eggs! And bit by bit our invited guests showed up. Many were surprised by how far the walk was to enter this section of park, but everyone had a blast once the event began. The kids loved searching for eggs and we let the adults help to finish off the hunt to make sure little to no candy was wasted.
After all the eggs were found, we hosted a prize giveaway in connection with some special eggs that teach the celebration of this holiday. The wild, astounding belief that God became human, was killed by people who would not accept His teachings, and came back to life to conquer death for all time. I am awestruck by the meaning of Easter!
It was such a blast to relive my childhood Easter Egg Hunts - this time by sharing the experience with some local kids from our neighborhood. If this story brings back memories for you, you still have a few days to plan your own Easter Egg event!
