Celebrating Passover

I looked forward to this Easter Season with excitement! One of the main reasons was being able to take another go at celebrating the Passover from a LDS perspective. We used this book again to walk us through recipes and ceremony procedures:

 

And we invited the Wolfe Family to join us! I love Passover, it falls a week before Easter giving Don and I a chance to introduce the crucial spiritual side of Easter before the Easter Bunny excitement takes over. Having the Wolfe’s with us did amazing things for the attention span of the kids too! We kept dinner simple (non-kosher pizza, unfortunately) while we watched a portion of the, Prince of Egypt, to refresh everyone’s memories on the exodus of the Jews from Egypt. And then we gathered around the table, set with extreme care to impress on the kids that what we were about to do was more reverent than casual:

The long plate in the middle would hold the “matzah” (unleavened bread) that we would later hide a portion of for the kids to find by candlelight – cool parable of finding the gospel/truth with the Light of Christ! The little glass jar has toys in it for each of the kids as a prize for finding the hidden matzah – obviously, their favorite part:) On the other end of the table is the Seder Plate, which held the various foods we would introduce to the kids that hold symbolic meaning:

A LOT of grape juice was consumed as we moved from one symbolic food to another we would end with a toast of gratitude/ remembrance of our Savior. One of my favorite parts was remembering the plagues by dipping our fingers in the grape juice for each of the plagues and dripping it on our napkins to count them – I think Liberty made up an additional 20 plagues because I couldn’t get her to stop, she just kept on dipping!

The preparation is consuming, the clean-up is extensive, but the satisfaction of the parents is priceless! As we sat around afterward discussing the deeper meaning of scriptural symbols with the kids running around with their matzah toys, I felt very content knowing we had made the effort to fortify our children a little more with the gospel and it’s hope…

FYI: To answer the question of why Don and I enjoy celebrating this Jewish holiday I’ll use this small excerpt from the above book: “In a very real sense, Passover and Easter are the same holiday. Passover simply looked forward in anticipation of the Atonement, while Easter looks back in commemoration. President Howard W. Hunter said, ‘I believe it is safe to say Passover is with out equal in the Jewish calendar of celebrations. It commemorates the passage of a people from subjection and bondage to freedom and deliverance. Passover in the Old Testament and Easter in the New Testament testify of the great gift God has given and of the sacrifice that was involved in its bestowal.’”