How to Explore the Easter Story as a Family

Katie O’Conor from the children and youth support team offers some ideas for families to try over the Easter weekend.

Over Easter, we are all going to be feeling and thinking lots of different things. Our point of views are going to be different depending on who we’re in a household with; if we’re an introvert or an extrovert; how savvy we are with technology. In years to come, people will be able to read lots of different accounts of how the world was during this time – yet each of our individual stories are important.

This is a funny time, adjusting to living together must be causing us to find out a few new things, even about people we think we know well! I’m sure if you asked everyone in your house how it was going, they might all say different things depending on if they are an extrovert or an introvert or how good they are at using technology to connect with others.

In a similar way, each of the Gospels gives us a different perspective on the Easter story. Within each of those accounts, there are different people who saw what happened to Jesus in different ways. Each of these perspectives are important and can help us understand the whole story better.

As we come to Easter weekend, a really simple way for your family to re-explore the story might be to look at each of the characters in the story and think about what their perspective on it might be. Try and read right through to the resurrection, and don’t forget the baddies!

Here are some ideas of people you might explore:

• Caesar
• Pilate
• The high priests
• Barabbas, or the Crowd who voted for him,
• The guards
• The two thieves on the crosses next to Jesus
• The Disciples,
• Jesus’ mother, Mary
• Judas, the betrayer
• Jesus, God.

As a family, take some time to think about what these different members of the story might have been thinking and feeling. Imagine you are that character: what would be going through your head in different moments of the story? You could each take a character and then share what you think, or act out a scene together and talk about it afterwards.

There are a few things that might help with this: you could use toy figures like Playmobil or LEGO that a child could recreate the story with, or you might like to draw what your chosen character might see, or even imagine what their diary entry might say.

Hopefully doing this will help you to explore the story afresh as a family and learn new perspectives on it from each other!