Last year, when the Kendall and Kathy Kelleys of Green Bay, Wis., arrived home after Palm Sunday Mass, the five youngest of their eight children recreated Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.

First they crafted a donkey from a cardboard box, an oatmeal can and a blanket. On this they seated a doll with dark brown hair and a robe.

“The children lined up their bears and dolls, positioning palms like they were holding them,” recalls Kathy. “They got the youngest to sing ‘Hosanna’ in the background. It was very cute and elaborate.”

In one sense, Kathy concedes, the scene was pure child’s play. But the children’s re-imagining of the Palm Sunday liturgy may have also helped the family to observe the subsequent Easter triduum with greater togetherness than ever before.

It is often in such simple and spontaneous ways that the Easter events are best impressed upon the young.

And families who launch customs based on the Church’s most solemn week report finding themselves united around the hope of the Resurrection for many Easter seasons to come.

“We try to teach our children the faith in ordinary ways every day — how they treat their brothers and sisters,” says Grace Cheffers of Worcester, Mass. “You have these relatively few days during the year when the liturgy and the rites can teach them so much about why we’re doing what we do. You have this golden opportunity in the triduum that’s all about this person, Jesus Christ.”

She, husband Mark and their 11 children, ages 1 to 19, begin on Holy Thursday. After the Mass of the Last Supper, the Cheffers follow Our Lord’s invitation to “watch and pray” by visiting seven churches.

“The traditional seven-church visit is appealing to children,” says Grace. “They stop for a short visit, kneel down and say hello to Our Lord, and then go. It’s an age-appropriate devotion. Kids who are 5 certainly can understand what they’re doing. And nobody’s telling them to sit still.”

Led by Mom and Dad’s example, the Cheffers pray before the tabernacle in each church for several short, but deeply reverential, minutes. Says Grace: “I don’t think there’s anything more powerful the children can witness.”

In the Moment

And then there are the standout “teaching moments” the triduum offers. Asked for an example, Father Tom MacLean of Blessed Sacrament Church in Lincoln, Neb., points to the real-life lessons children can learn from the Holy Thursday ceremony of the washing of the feet.

“It’s a beautiful discourse between Jesus and the apostles on the necessity to serve one another,” says the priest. “The idea to wash another person’s smelly feet is a humbling experience. It demonstrates the need to be at each other’s service, and that is the source of our happiness — giving rather than receiving.”

Father MacLean suggests a practical way children can apply the lesson. “Any kind of visit to the poor, the sick, the elderly, people in hospitals, in nursing homes,” he says. “That would be great for the family.”

Good Friday finds the Niers family of Green Bay keeping quiet time. Last year, Lita and husband David began a new tradition with their five kids, ages 7 to 18. 

“Each family member asks forgiveness for the hurts they’ve caused each other,” says Lita. “Knowing that we’re leaving the veneration service where Christ has forgiven his enemies, it was perfect to play into that. We want to formalize that by going to each member of the family and asking forgiveness for each hurt.”

Father Kevin Barrett, chaplain of the Apostolate for Family Consecration at Catholic Familyland in Ohio, likes the annual-event possibilities offered by the movie The Passion of the Christ.

“Mel Gibson basically gave us a Way of the Cross,” he says. “He applied powerful means of communication to communicate the greatest message of love ever communicated by God to man through the passion and death of his son.”

Just so, countless families are likely adding Gibson’s Passion to their triduum observance this year. In fact, in De Pere, Wis., Maryann and Kurt Kohlmann and their eight children, ages 5 to 20, are modifying their annual Lenten media blackout (no TV, radio or computer).

“During Holy Week, we will allow the children to watch The Passion,” says Maryann. “Our 10-year-old really wants to watch it.”

Nor does watching a movie about the Passion preclude participating in a more traditional observance of the Stations of the Cross — it can be a both/and rather than an either/or.

The Cheffers always take part in an outdoor Way of the Cross that wends along streets to three inner-city parishes, their church among them. And if the younger kids get restless? Mom Grace looks for some way to bring them into the moment on a personal level. “I tell them to think of someone who might need their prayers,” she says. “Someone they know who is suffering.”

Sweet Symbolism

At the Kelley’s home, all are asked to keep the silence between noon and 3 p.m.  “I have the younger ones do a hands-on meditation of their own every year,” she explains. She gives them a square of cardboard and tacky glue and has them build a model of the tomb for Jesus with whatever they find in the yard. They kids delight in picking moss, tiny sticks for a pathway and little rocks to make the tomb.

“It takes them a while and it always forces them to think,” Kathy says. “They can picture Jesus being laid in the tomb. On Easter they bring them out and move a little pebble-sized rock to show the tomb is empty and Jesus is risen.”

Holy Saturday is a day of waiting and preparation for the Kelleys. They make Ukrainian poppy-seed cakes for Easter breakfast. They’re baked in a circle to symbolize eternity; the seeds are symbolic, too.

“As we bake it we talk about the symbols,” says Kathy. “Because the children do it every year, as they get older they hear it repeated and eventually they understand.”

The Kohlmanns have a food-related custom, too. Because they’ve been abstaining from sweets throughout Lent, the family goes for ice cream right after the Holy Saturday Easter Vigil Mass. “We’ll buy two quarts from the grocery store on the way home,” says Maryann. “It’s one of our big highlights.”

On Holy Saturday, the Niers make Easter Story cookies. The recipe calls for Scripture verses to be read with the addition of each ingredient. Before going to bed, the children put the cookies into the oven and seal the door with tape.

“We read the chapter in Matthew where Jesus was put in the tomb,” she says. “Sunday morning we open the oven. Then we read the passage where Jesus is risen from the tomb.” And they eat. “It’s a very sweet cookie,” she says.

Thanks to the family’s dedication to keeping up with their Easter customs, the same can be said of the occasion the sweet cookies symbolize and commemorate.

Joseph Pronechen writes from

Trumbull, Connecticut.