Have a Sad Easter, Kiddo.

Kids deserve to celebrate.

Over my 20-odd years in kids’ ministries, I’ve watched so many kids hear the common phrases that summarize Easter for the first time, and I’ve come to realize this:

Many of those phrases are perfectly accurate, and completely confusing to them. They are full of fancy theological jargon that kids don’t know. Or they are representing conclusions, but the child needs to be walked through how we got there. We don’t show our work; we simply give them answers.

So a couple Easters ago,, based on those observations, I wrote a post on Instagram with alternative phrases for kids. I offered that they could be more accessible, better understood, and more faithful in representing Resurrection Sunday–rather than Good Friday, or atonement theories–to children.

Many people found them helpful.

Some found them unacceptable.

Folks from the more conservative side of faith showed up to comment-bomb the post for being, to their minds, untrue and unbiblical.

(In case you’re wondering, here is the wording I suggested.)

• What is Easter? Easter is when we celebrate that Jesus is alive!

• Why did Jesus come? Jesus came to show us what God is like and say the time had come for God to make all things good. He called it a kingdom, like a place where God was the good king and everything is just as good and lovely as God is.

• Why did Jesus die? Because Jesus was talking about being king of a new kingdom, the Romans and their king, Caesar, were very upset. They wanted to kill Jesus for threatening the empire. And because Jesus was talking about God’s kingdom, the religious leaders were very upset. They thought Jesus was not allowed to speak on God’s behalf – to say a new thing was happening. They wanted to kill Jesus for being disloyal to the way they were sure God wanted things.

• What does Easter mean for me? Jesus is alive, and we can be friends with him. God dreams of a world that works in a way that matches who God is. Because Jesus is alive, we can join the team that helps make that dream come true more and more.

• Why does Jesus' resurrection matter? Our world has hard and sad things in it, including death. There’s a gap between God’s dream and what is happening now. The Bible calls it Sin. Sin is just anything that’s not what God wants. But the hard, sad things won’t last forever. Jesus won and Sin lost, all because he's alive!

I know. How dare I? But seriously, why the insistence on camping on death and sorrow?

The Insistence on Sorrow

What I want to talk about today is the persistent myth that presenting theological material, or telling Bible stories to kids, in ways that I would call developmentally appropriate is actually a copout. Especially at Easter.

So many parents believe it’s their job on this holiday to be sure their child knows they’re a sinner and Jesus took their punishment. And if that’s their job, they have to turn on the guilt and talk about gory violence, whether they want to or not. This, despite the fact that the Bible talks about how Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection address the problem of sin and its effects in many different ways.

Why is that?

Perhaps underneath that view lies the assumption that a child only has so much time to make a firm decision about Jesus…or else. And underneath that is the idea that a child can only make a decision about Jesus if they have been shown the depth of Jesus' suffering, and how they themselves caused it.

But the online personalities who claim guilt and gore are necessary don’t know your kid. They don’t know if the violence of the story will give them nightmares. They don’t know if the heavy emotions will seep into their souls. They don’t know where your kid is at in the long process of getting to know God so they can discover if God can be trusted.

They don’t know if telling the story in this way will actually hurt, not help, your kid get to know Jesus, and I’m not sure they really care.

And even though they know none of that, they are sure that you must foist upon your child the full details of the stories from the Triumphal Entry to the Trial to the Passion from an early age, or else, they claim, you aren’t leading them in the Truth.

This is bananas.

The truth of Easter is that Christ is risen. Hope is alive. Death will not win. Sorrow will not stay forever. Why would a child not be invited into a very happy day that points to a very happy future? Why would we ever think a sad Easter is somehow more spiritual? 

When the sole purpose of Easter becomes confronting one’s sinfulness, it’s easy for a child to miss the single plot point that makes the story happen at all: Jesus is alive.

Sure, in order to talk about the resurrection, we need to tell the part where Jesus dies. However, the events that lead to Jesus’ death, and the theological meaning we make from those events are complex. And when you try to explain the whole complexity of it all to a kid, it doesn’t leave much room for the point – Jesus is alive.

Spiral Learning at Easter

In my book Woven: Nurturing a Faith Your Kid Doesn’t Have to Heal From, I share how we can use an educational practice called spiral learning for complex faith and Bible related topics. Spiral learning advocates for breaking complex material into small pieces on purpose and focusing on only one at a time. 

For our purposes, that allows us to a) meet our kid where they are at, b) draw upon what they already know, and c) circle back over time with new information, layers of meaning, or nuance.

Using spiral learning would mean an adult intentionally omits details from the story of Jesus’ last days, knowing we have time to circle back both to the details of the various stories that precede and follow Resurrection Sunday as well as to how we make meaning of those stories.

For example, we can talk about death in age-accessible ways that are not gory. For very young kids I’ve said, “They made a plan to get rid of Jesus. It worked, and Jesus died. It was a sad day.” 

With an older kid it might sound like “They wanted Jesus out of the picture. So they had him arrested and sentenced to death. It was violent and painful, and in the end Jesus was killed.” 

In other words, you tell, not show–using words that summarize the experience without having to go into detail. Even the phrase “on a cross” is something you can include or leave out based on your child. Once you mention the cross, kids very often become curious about how that causes death. So if you know you or your child aren’t ready for that layer, save it for another time.

Sad Easter Buy-In

When we present Easter to kids with guilt and gore, it feels like everyone else gets to celebrate at Easter, except children, because they are new to the story, and we think they aren’t allowed to have the happy parts until they have gone through the purgatory of the sad parts. 

The women at the tomb get to be amazed and confused and overjoyed. The disciples in the upper room as well. The men on the Emmaus road get to feel elation as their hearts burn within them. 

But children? Children need to feel sad. Children need to feel guilt. Children need to feel complicit in Jesus' crucifixion, or they aren’t invited to delight in his return to life.

Some people would rather kids be sad on Easter as proof the child takes it seriously than let kids celebrate that their friend Jesus is alive.

Sorrow is not the buy-in to celebration. Joy is the appropriate reaction to this news.

What’s more, my observation of children testifies to this: 

Jesus is magnetic. 

His barrier-breaking, border-crossing love is amazingly attractive. His invitation to a world that works in ways that match who God is is inspiring and hopeful. When kids are told that Jesus’ resurrection means that the reign of God really is here, and really will expand, and they are never ever separated from Love, they light up. They say yes. They want in.

May any of us who have the privilege of spending Easter with a child go all-in on joy, hope, and life. Happy, happy, Easter.

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If this essay was helpful, I’d be grateful if you’d pass it along to a friend.

• EASTER RESOURCES: If you’d like story scripts and activity ideas to approach the Easter story (and the stories around it) this way, I have Family Toolkits (7 stories) and Easter Story Guides (just Easter) for ages 2-5 and 6-11.

Remember, if you’re part of the Kids + Faith Community, you get 25% off.

• TACKLING THE STORIES: If you want some help revisiting and unpacking Good Friday and the Resurrection, we talked about them last Easter on I Kid You Not on the Faith Adjacent Podcast.

IKYN: Tricky Stories: Good Friday & The Resurrection

• IF NOT PURITY CULTURE, THEN WHAT? Also on Faith Adjacent, our newest episode explored ways we talk with young people about sex, bodies, consent, etc. in non-purity culture ways. Find it here.

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However you are coming to Easter this year, may the Spirit give you hope. May the risen Christ be your joy. May the living God meet you there. Amen.