One of the biggest reasons I decided to pack the girls up and make the trip, was because Monday night was the first night of Passover...and I really like passover. There are alot of holidays and observances that we and/or our respective families celebrate that really outline the difference between Arnie's Jewish upbringing and my Christian faith...but passover isn't one of them and I truly appreciate that as a family, Arnie, Maggie and I can all observe and share in the passover Seder (the meal/telling of the passover story) and truly be moved by it's meaning. We often feel like we're charting some of our own waters, when we make decisions about how to teach our kids about faith, tradition, God, Jesus and how they all come together in our family life. We decide long before we were married that our kids would be raised in my church with a strong understand for and appreciation of their Jewish heritage....that's alot easier said then done...BUT passover is one of the days that it truly all comes together.
Someday I'm going to host a Seder for my christian family, there is so much biblical history and symbolism in the story. When Jesus sat down with his disciples at the last supper, they were observing a passover Seder. The washing of the disciples hands and feet, and the breaking of the bread and blessing of the wine, that we now refer to as communion, is all derived directly from the passover Seder.
At Dick & Betti's we did a very kid friendly, less formal Seder this year then in past years. I was so impressed by Maggie's ability to understand the basic story we were telling her and she asked lots of great questions. Before the Seder starts a wine glass is placed in the center of table and filled symbolically for Elijah (Jewish people believe the Elijah is a prophet that will return before the Messiah, Christians believe the Elijah came in the form of John the Baptist)...during the Seder the leader (in our case Dick) knocks on the table and someone goes and opens the door to allow Elijah to join the passover observance. Well, this part of the story was very confusing for Maggie, about a hundred times since then she's asked us why that "fake guy" knocked on the door.....hmmmmmm, she's wise beyond her years, and I don't have an answer that seems to satisfy her question.
Last year at this time Maggie was obsessed with or maybe I should say terrified of the Easter Bunny (it is kind of a strange concept for small children when you think about it. At least Santa is a person, but a giant candy delivering bunny??? really???)....she was so afraid of the idea of him coming into our house while we were sleeping, she kept telling Reagan to be sure to chase him away. We have yet to really mention him this year, we'll see what happens this weekend when we start dying the eggs.
It's funny that she seems to have a very basic, toddlers understanding of both Passover and Easter, but the 2 things she really gets hung up on are the things that don't really effect the meaning of either holiday.... Maybe kids really do know what it's all about.
Here are a few pictures from our Passover celebration....
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| Poor Uncle Evan was tasked with trying to take a family picture... |
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| Gracie tried to stay awake...but she just couldn't do it :) |
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| Maggie folowing along, she was a little confused because to her the book "went the wrong way". |
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| Maggie was a good sport, she tried everything we gave her, including: horseradish, parsley, and gefilte fish. |
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| During the Seder the leader hides a piece of Matzah, called the Afikoman, then the kids go look for it... Once they find it they get to sell it back to him. I think Maggie might be the highest paid Afikoman finder around! |
Passover was once again a wonderful experience and it's really fun to watch Maggie start to appreciate and look forward to participating in all of our different traditions.
I'll add another post shortly of more pictures of our time in Arizona.....
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