Many of my readers know that traditions and memories are special in our family, and especially so to me. Easter is one of those. Easter was the holiday Mike was in charge of, until recent years.  Mike was the one who planned and handled all the details of the dying of Easter eggs. He has now passed that responsibility on to the next generation.

This year, our daughter Chatham and son-in-law Johnathan handled the preparations while grandson Drew and I did the egg dying. I think this was the first year that everyone present did not dye their own, and others’, eggs. I do not know why that happened. It wasn’t planned; it just happened. But although the process this year was different, the tradition held; those of us who could made time to dye Easter eggs as a family.

Daughter Tara and family could not be with us this year for egg dying or for Easter because they are traveling in the UK and preparing daughter Mary Grace for her semester of study at Oxford University.

It is fine for traditions to change as the years change. What we should try to do, however, is keep traditions alive. Traditions bind us to our history, and the memories that are created from those times center us in ways nothing else does.

As you peruse my family’s photos of some of our traditions, think not of our traditions, but of your own family’s traditions. Keep the memories alive. When we are no longer here to share in those times, if we have kept traditions alive, our spirit will live on in the memories we helped create.    

Have a wonderful Easter week. Let us remember the reason for the Easter season to Christians is not about egg dying at all. It is about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.