This year, Easter Sunday falls on April 4. 2021. With just about a month away and restrictions on gatherings still applicable in most cities and towns, how can you celebrate this important holiday in a safe way and still allow the kids (of all ages, mind you) to have fun? Here are some ideas we picked up from a few different places. They’ll give you a starting point for what foods to serve, what entertainment is safe, and a few trivia facts about this special holiday.
Safe Celebrations: Remember that we're not out of the woods yet as far as the pandemic is concerned. Do not travel if you're at risk or might put someone else at risk. Follow all state and federal mandates on mask-wearing and other practices. If you're organizing a family gathering, keep it small and don't force anyone to come if they're hesitant about traveling. 2021 is shaping up to be a better year but it's still too early to say that we're all safe and sound.
Easter Sunday 2021 Food Ideas
Salad: Parmesan Brussel Sprouts and Chicken Salad
This delicious and healthy salad comes with chicken as an option for the long-of-tooth but is equally scrumptious without it. You can make it to suit your preference because the base is essentially Brussel sprouts (halved and sliced), with some chopped toasted almonds and pomegranate seeds that you fold in after tossing the salad. For the dressing, you can use a blend of olive oil, lemon juice, chopped-up parsley, salt, and pepper. Finally, you garnish it with some shaved parmesan right before you serve it up. A tasty and healthy treat for any salad lover!
Soup: Easter Soup with Kielbasa and Hard-boiled Eggs
The modern version of this classic and traditional recipe needs Polish sausages or kielbasa, which you boil to make the broth as well as serve with the soup. After boiling it for about 40 minutes, the broth and kielbasa are then separated and kept overnight in the fridge. The following morning, take them out and skim the fat off the broth. Add vinegar, horseradish, flour, and cream, and boil it in a pan. As you let it simmer for another 10 minutes or so, you can rewarm the kielbasa and slice it. Serve the hot broth with the sliced kielbasa and hard-boiled eggs. Simply delicious!
Main Course: Rack of Lamb or Crown of Lamb
You can go all fancy for this one since it’s your main course. You’ll find lots of terrific recipes on sites like Food, AllRecipes, and TheSpruceEats, so pick one that looks good and serves enough for your family. And don’t forget - leftovers are always welcome! Some recipes use red wine while some use sherry vinegar, but you can switch them based on your preference or budget. Some say it’s all in the gravy but, visually speaking, the crown is equally important. The trick with the crown is to use a tin can or a jar covered with aluminium foil to help shape your crown. Place the two lamb racks as semi-circles around the jar or can and tie them into position with twine. The can or jar will help keep it in place as you tie the racks. You can remove it once you’re done. You should also remember to cover the bone ends of the ribs with bits of foil so they don’t burn. And inside the twine, you can insert sprigs of rosemary for an awesome aroma.
Dessert: Strawberry-Lemonade Layer Cake
It’s pink, it’s lemony, it’s gorgeous to look at, and it’s a great way to top off a heavy meal. It takes a bit of work to make the jam and the frosting but, hey, it’s Easter! The trick here is in the mixing of ingredients. You can, of course, mix everything by hand, but a hand-blender does a better job of giving you the right consistency, whether it’s the eggs, the frosting, or the jam. Don’t forget to chill the jam for a couple of hours before using it, and the frosting needs to be used right away. However, this cake can be made a couple of days before Easter and will keep at room temperature. You can also put slices in an airtight container and keep them in the fridge for up to a week.
Fun Stuff to Do on Easter Sunday 2021
Easter Sunday isn’t complete without a little bit of fun and frolic for the kids and the kids-at-heart. This year you’ll probably be celebrating at home with some close family members and friends. Be sure to observe the necessary safety precautions, but loosen up when it’s game time! Here are some classic activities that are fun for all.
Decorate an Easter Egg Tree: These are easy to do and fun for the kids, too. Paint hard-boiled eggs or use any type of decorated eggs to embellish your tree. String up some lights and you’re done!
Create Easter Crafts: There are tons of crafts for all age groups. For kids, there’s obviously egg-painting; for teens, a challenging Easter Egg Hunt with clues, etc.; for adults, a messy but fun game of Egg Darts - hard to clean up but everyone scores a sunny side up!
Egg and Spoon Race: You can make this classic game even more thrilling with raw eggs, but that also makes the cleaning-up that much more thrilling! Lemons are good, too, but eggs are more traditional. Remember: use the right-sized spoons so it doesn’t become too easy or too hard.
Read Easter and Spring Children's Books: A quiet indoor reading session or an all-out play with sound effects, voices, etc. It’s fun to do and will keep the smaller ones entertained for a while. Some good titles for this are Emma the Easter Fairy, Here Comes the Easter Cat, and Llama Llama Easter Egg.
Plant Flowers: A more eco-friendly way to celebrate Easter is to plant flowers or saplings. They represent new life, which is what Easter is all about. Planting flowers also makes your garden more colorful overnight, and you can enjoy their fragrance and brilliant hues through the Spring. Calendula, Petunias, Nigella, and Cornflowers are quick-blooming so you can also work with seeds.
Fun Facts about Easter
Pretzels are often associated with The Lenten season before Easter because the folds look like arms folded in prayer. It goes back to the early Church from between 300 AD to 600 AD, and there are even archived documents at the Vatican that support this. In the early days, people would fold their arms across their chest in prayer, hence the resemblance.
Rabbits are mammals, so they don’t lay eggs. So how did the Easter Egg tradition come about? It supposedly crept into modern lore around the 1700s when Germans settlers in Pennsylvania brought over the makings of Eastre, an Anglo-Saxon festival that featured the Spring Goddess and her representative, a cute but mythical egg-laying bunny called Osterhase.
Around the 1850s, Christians in New York began the tradition of wearing new clothes on Easter morning. Most believed that doing this brought luck that would last year-round. That tradition is followed to this day by many people nearly 170 years later.
In Ukraine, they made wax eggs and dyed them. They were called ‘pysankas.’ When the first migrants from there came to the United States, they continued the tradition, and it caught on like wildfire. Today, regular eggs are painted all over the world on Easter Sunday as a symbol of a new beginning.
This tradition was celebrated in medieval times as a game between the priest and the choirboys just before midnight on the night before Easter. The priest would throw a hard-boiled egg to a choirboy, who would then toss it to another, and so on. The choirboy in whose hand it landed when the clock struck 12 got to keep the egg. It was considered lucky and was an honor for the boy who won.
Yes, that’s how much candy is purchased just in the United States alone in the week leading up to Easter Sunday. The figure for Valentine’s Day is a relatively paltry 48 million pounds, but the figure for Easter is overshadowed by the 90 million pounds of candy sold every year for… you guessed it - Halloween!
This Easter, gift your loved one a Friendship Lamp and get one for yourself. Once you set them up with their respective Wi-Fi connections in any location across the world, you can use them to communicate with each other and stay connected.
A simple tap on one lamp will make all the other lamps in that global network light up in a pre-chosen color!
It’s fun, it’s affordable, and it’s a great way to send a ‘hey there’ message to anyone anywhere in the world without worrying about voicemail, texting, emails, or phone calls.
Click here to learn more about FriendLamps
Click here to purchase FriendLamps
