Celebrating Holy Days

 

Easter is a wonderful season filled with new life and excitement about warm weather and playing outside.  It is also a time that the church celebrates the passion, death, and resurrection of our Savior.  Experience has shown that in many Nazarene churches we do a sufficient job of celebrating the Easter event.  We have Easter Egg Hunts that include Resurrections Eggs that guide us toward the true meaning of Easter, we have special worship services that focus on the death and resurrection of Christ, and we may even have special parties.  In the midst of all this activity have we missed the opportunity to celebrate Easter and other holy days so that they impact our children in ways that change their relationship with God?

The church has always celebrated “holy days.”  These are days that the church recognizes as “set apart” and provide the opportunity for special observances and celebrations.  Holy days, or holy seasons, give occasion to help children understand the master story of God from beginning to end and allows for the building of traditions as these days are celebrated from one year to the next.  A listing of the holy days and seasons can be found in the Revised Common Lectionary.  An overview of some of these days will be the focus of this article.

Advent and Christmas:  The word “advent” comes from a Latin word that means “to come to” or “coming.”  The Advent season celebrates the birth of Christ and begins four Sundays prior to Christmas.  The purpose of the Advent season is to prepare, anticipate, proclaim, and celebrate the coming of the Messiah.  This can be accomplished in a variety of ways.  Many churches use Advent wreaths as a visible symbol and reminder of the focus of each Sunday.  Each candle that circles the wreath is lit on its given Sunday with the center candle, the Christ candle, being lit on Christmas day or during the Christmas service.  The rehearsal of each candle and what it represents allows children to redefine their understanding of Christmas and allows them to prepare, anticipate, proclaim, and celebrate in ways that bring Christmas to life.

The advantage of focusing on Advent rather than Christmas is that it helps children to give attention to the real meaning of the holy day.  No longer is Christmas about Santa Claus and presents, although these may have a place in the celebration, the real focus is on the birth of Christ and the events leading up to His coming.  It also provides an opportunity to present Christmas in the context of the whole story of God so children see Christmas not as an individual event but as a part of the metanarrative, God’s master story.  Children will begin to see Christmas as a moment in God’s story that continues in Easter and Pentecost.  This also allows for Advent to not only be about the coming of Christ as a baby but to also be about his coming again.  Each Sunday of Advent provides an ongoing opportunity to hear the story from a variety of perspectives and prepares the child to better understand the significance of Christmas morning.

Lent, Holy Week, and Easter:  The Lenten season begins on Ash Wednesday, 40 days before Easter, and culminates in the Easter celebration.  Since Sundays celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, the six Sundays of Lent are not included in the 40 day count.  Lent is marked by intentional prayer, fasting, and preparation for Easter.  Many Christians choose to give up something of significance during this season as a reminder to focus on what Christ has done for them.  Lent provides a wonderful opportunity to help children focus on spiritual issues.  The six Sundays of Lent provide an opportunity to rehearse the life of Christ as He made His way to Jerusalem to be crucified for the sins of humanity.  Each Sunday is a new step in the journey.  The season also provides the opportunity to speak about specific days within the 40 days.  Ash Wednesday, for instance, has many traditions that allow children to experience the holy day.
 
In addition to Ash Wednesday, Holy Week, the week leading to Easter, provides unique opportunities that do not exist the rest of the year.  Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter all represent an important part in the story of Christ’s passion and resurrection.  Maundy Thursday, for instance, is a day that celebrates Jesus’ last Passover meal.  Wonderful reenactments of this meal, referred to as a Seder, provide children and parents a first-hand experience of the Passover meal and a deeper understand of New Testament imagery throughout this Old Testament celebration.  Many sources are available for those who choose to incorporate this into their Holy Week celebration.

The wonderful celebration opportunities that are a part of the Lenten season have the power to transform the way children understand what we usually cram into one day called Easter.  I expect that the Easter celebration would take on a completely new focus once children have spent 40 days preparing for the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Could it be that after a child experienced the celebrations that are a part of the traditions of Lent their relationship with God would be a bit deeper and more fully understood?

Pentecost:  Perhaps the best description of Pentecost Sunday is the “forgotten” holy day. It occurs on the seventh Sunday following Easter and is often neglected in most churches including Nazarene churches.  There may be many reasons for overlooking this holy day, but the fact that it is a day that commemorates the activity of the Holy Spirit among God’s people makes it a celebration we should not neglect.

Pentecost was originally celebrated in the Old Testament and was known then as the Feast of Weeks, a time of giving thanks for the “first fruits” of the crops.  In the New Testament, we read in Acts 2 that 50 days following Easter there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the Feast of Weeks focused changed to Pentecost.  As twenty-first century Christians we have an opportunity to use the celebration of Pentecost to teach our children of the work of the Holy Spirit among His people.  We rarely have problems teaching children about God the Father or God the Son, but we often find it difficult teaching about God the Holy Spirit.  Perhaps Dennis Bratcher is correct when he says, “There is tremendous opportunity to use this sacred time to call people to renewal through the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives” (Bratcher 2007).  By taking advantage of this recognized holy day we are given another opportunity to help our children grow in a deeper and more informed knowledge of God.

Holy days, or holy seasons, provide opportunities for the church to educate both parents and children in the rituals and traditions of the church, not just for knowledge sake, but as a means to more deeply grow in love with God.  Perhaps it is time that we take more seriously these holy days that have been a part of the church from its earliest days and use them to help our families become the disciples they want to be.

Special thanks to Dr. Dennis Bratcher and The Voice for some of the background information used in this article.  For more information on the history and celebration of holy days and seasons see Dr. Dennis Bratcher’s website www.crescourcei.org/index.html.