Waldorf Easter

Please share what you do for Easter...
also,
what's in your dc's waldorf easter basket........
It is my ds' first Easter he is 17 months...

My Nana gave me a huge beautiful basket to use...

I lined it with one of his yellow play silks...
inside awaiting for him on Easter is

a new green pocket gnome, mini green silk,
2 shirts, a wooden pencil, Lana Bar, little wooden cups (5), mini bamboo cutting board...
I am awaiting a nice book called I Can Help from Nova Natural...
& I am going to put some fresh organic blackberries in...
perhaps some fresh flowers, and a couple Odwalla Bars and Organic Juice boxes....

Please share your ideas....

Aw.

My children are older now, but we still do the Easter egg hunt.

When they were small, I made them a little basket for the egg hunt and put in it a little stuffed or woolen rabbit or baby chick, but usually the bunny rabbit. And I usually tried to find an Easterish or springtime type storybook to give them, such as Beatrix Potter or The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes.

The holiday is special to us because we have a lot of family come to feast (my husband's a bit of a gourmet and feasting is a big deal in our family). We play croquet out on the grass--grandpa enjoys it as much as the children do, so it's a perfect afternoon out in the sunshine for us. The sunshine part is iffy this year. It's been so long since I've seen sunshine, it feels like I'm in Portland.

Our Easter probably sounds a lot more Edwardian than it does Waldorfian,.

Quote:
Aren't those plastic cello-wrapped, crud filled, Easter baskets you see in the stores scary bizarre? They've been around since I was a child, but we didn't have them in our family--though I do remember my rather simple baskets were padded with the plastic Easter grass. (I'm surprised too how Easter has turned somewhat into another holiday for kids to 'cash in'. My children would come home with stories that kids at school were receiving bicycles, game systems, cash, etc at Easter. )

According to one of the pages I read as I explored the wikipedia articles, the Easter basket was adapted at some point at the coming together of the Christian resurrection festival and the folk traditional colored egg gathering. In the medieval days, the entire year seemed to occillate from feast days to fast days. There was a fasting period associated with Good Friday (the length of the fast seems to vary), and farmed eggs would accumulate, leaving plenty for the colored egg festivities. The Christians traditionally ended the fast by bringing a basket of food to the church for a ceremonial blessing of the food. This basket was used later in the day by the children, apparently, to collect the hidden eggs with.

my son is only 10.5 months old but I still made a small easter basket for him. I have included a small bunny shaped fabric rattle, a small peter rabbit board book, a knot doll, and a handmade stuffed bunny

Quote:
I think Eostre was actually the Anglo-saxon goddess of Spring. Of course, the Christians decided to adopt the name for the holiday because spring = new life and that is what the resurrection of Christ is all about. And if you can Christianize a pagan holiday, why reinvent the wheel?

Using an easter basket his grandma gave him last year.
Yes I am giving him some small solid bunny chocolates. Nothing wrong with chocolate to me, one of the finer things in life.
And some wooden animal figures
that's it

Since DS hardly ever has candy but does enjoy it once in a blue moon I did buy some to add to his basket. Oh yea, we use the same basket every year and he sets it out the evening before.

mini bag of Sundrops ( natural type m&ms)
Panda natural licorace
3 organic juice boxes
2 bug bite chocolates
organic jelly beans
fruit leather
seasame crunch
odwalla food bars

a little baseball mitt
2 beach/pool blowup tubes
rubber animals ( i know)
a homebirth childrens book
2 little matchbox type cars
seashells
a little stuff bird that tweets to support audobon society (couldnt resist)

some handmade ( by me) felted critters

The rubber animals, cars, seashells,felted gnomes and such i will hide in eggs for an egg hunt.