Our Passover Celebration

On Thursday night our family celebrated the passover with a special Jerusalem dinner.  This is our third year celebrating the feast of the passover. Ours isn't an authentic Seder ritual, but is adjusted to fit our beliefs and family.  Our first time we started out small and simple, and each year it has gotten a bit more in depth.  But still, the whole thing was relatively easy to put together, and hopefully, over the years, this Jerusalem dinner will become an important and testimony building tradition for our family to prepare us each year for Easter, and to help us understand the significance of this holy and joyous season.

We had the feast outside, and the weather was absolutely perfect.  I covered the table in tea-dyed muslin that I had leftover from something I did years ago, and the artificial palm fronds that we used Sunday night for our Palm Sunday play.  Then I decorated with candles and oil lamps and anything else that looked period Jerusalem.  Of course, we also used them to light our meal, which gave it a wonderful ambiance.  I put the food in baskets and I would have used clay or wood bowls, had I had some.  And at the center of the table I placed the statue of Christ in Gethsemane, to remind all of what this passover ritual was really about.  

Before we began I set out the special symbolic food for the Seder ritual: Grape juice, 3 squares of matzo, a lamb shank, some bitter herbs (romaine lettuce and horseradish), a roasted egg, Charoset (chopped fruit, nut, cinnamon, and honey), parsley, and salt water.  That is really all you need for the Seder.  It is really easy to put together.  You can find matzos in the grocery store, as well as the lamb shank.  The one I bought was pre-cooked and frozen.

As night fell, we were ready to begin our passover feast.  There is something about eating by the light of the fire that is calming and invites reverence. 

 We started with a prayer and hymn.  In this picture Caleb and Luke are leading us in "As I have Loved You."  Then we discussed briefly what the passover was and why the Jews celebrate it.  We talk about how Jesus Christ himself, even a s a small child like they are, attended a passover feast every year.  Even though the Jews did this ritual every year, they did not fully understand the true symbolism - how every part of it points directly to Christ.  Did Jesus even know as a small child that the rituals they did all pointed to him?

First, we had everyone wash their hands.  In the ritual, the Jews traditionally pass around a wash bowl, but we decided to go the more modern route, and passed around the hand sanitizer ;-) . 

We began with the grape juice, or "wine".  We discussed what the Jews take it to symbolize - the lamb blood that they put over their doors.  Then we discussed how it is the very symbol of the blood of Christ that we partake of every Sabbath in the sacrament. We reminded them that the sacrament that we partake of each week was passed for the very first time that very night by Christ himself in that upper room during the passover feast.   As we discussed it, someone walked around and poured grape juice in each glass.  The kids were encouraged to ask questions and make comments, but only like they would in Primary - reverently raising their hands.  

Next I picked up the 3 pieces of matzo bread, took the middle piece, broke it in two, and wrapped it in some muslin, and asked a adult to go hide it somewhere in the yard.  We then passed around the other two matzos and discusses the symbolism of bread, the "bread of life", and as it is used in the sacrament as the flesh of Christ.  We also talked about leaven, and how the Jews escaping Egypt had no time to wait for leaven to raise their bread, and how leaven, like sin,  is a corrupting agent, and that the unleavened bread represents the sinless life of Christ.  We discuss how the Jewish people cleanse their homes of every crumb of leaven before the passover, and how that represents repentance.  We must go and look in every corner of our souls to clear out all the leaven, or sin, that can corrupt us.

The we passed around the lamb shank, and everyone picked off a piece and ate it.  We discussed the pascal Lamb, the blood of which the Jews used to paint over their doors, and how their sacrifice in the temple of the unblemished lamb represents Christ, the lamb of God, the perfect sacrifice to atone for our sins. 

We followed this with the roasted egg.  We discussed the meaning of eggs at Easter, how they represent new life, and how they seem to be dead and unmoving, until suddenly one day they hatch and a  new life emerges.  This is like the death of Christ.  All seemed lost.  He was dead.  Then suddenly he was alive again.  For the Jews, interestingly, the roasted egg represents the temple because that is where they made burnt offerings (thus the roasted egg).  After the Temple was destroyed, the egg served as a remembrance of the temple that once had been.  But for us it is also a symbol that temples have been restored, and that the blessings that flow from them are again on the earth.

Then we passed around the bitter herb.  The Jews use bitter herbs to remember the bitterness of slavery that they suffered under the Egyptians. We had both horseradish and romaine, because they have different symbolism.  The romaine is interesting because it starts out sweet in your mouth, then becomes bitter over time.  Sin is the same way.  It is often enticing and sweet to begin with, then turns bitter once we have been drawn in.  Horseradish is pungent and strong enough to cause physical discomfort.  Like sin, it burns us.

Then we passed around the dish of charoset, which is a mixture of chopped up fruit, nuts, cinnamon, and honey.  To the Jews it represents the mortar that the slaves used to build Egypt, and the sweetness of their miraculous escape from Pharaoh.  It also represents contrast.  After the bitter comes the sweet.  After the bitter crucifixion of Christ came the sweetness of the resurrection.  After the bitterness of sin and repentance, comes the sweetness of forgiveness.  Like Adam and Eve, we can appreciate the sweet because we have experienced the bitter.  In fact, the horseradish that we tasted earlier still burns on the tongue, even while we are tasting the charoset.  In good, sweet times, we still remember the bitter and are grateful.  In the bitter times we remember the sweet blessings of the past and are hopeful.

Finally we passed around the parsley and salt water.  Everyone took a piece of parsley and dipped it into the salt water and ate it.  To the Jews the parsley represents the hyssop used to smear the blood over their doors and the salt water represents the tears of the slaves.  Parsley is green and also a symbol for new life.  For us the salt water also represents the bitter tears that Christ shed for us that very night in the Garden of Gethsemane.

By this point everyone was getting pretty hungry.  But then little Ayden, who is just barely five, asked about the matzo bread we hid.  Perfect timing.  The children ran off to find the bread.  (We had to remind them it wasn't a contest, as long as someone found it.)  When it was brought back to the table it was unwrapped from the muslin.  The kids were a bit disappointed, as they had expected it to be some kind of magic trick and the broken matzo would be whole again.  Of course it wasn't, but that would have been cool because that is exactly what it represented.  (Maybe we can make that happen next year.)  It was the middle of the three pieces, three representing the godhead, and Christ being the one in the middle.  Breaking it and wrapping it in fabric had represented Christ's crucifixion and being wrapped in the burial cloth.  Being found was the resurrection.  We passed the broken pieces around, and everyone ate a small piece - symbolic of the fact that everyone will be blessed by the gift of the resurrection, poor and rich, bond and free, righteous and wicked.  All will be resurrected.

This was the end of our Passover Seder ritual.  Then we ate.

We had a dinner made entirely of foods that Christ would have had in Jerusalem.  We had delicious lamb and barley- lamb is so buttery and flavorful, but expensive, which is why we only have it once a year.  There was also a lentil soup, that wasn't exactly soupy, made with grape juice, which made it sweet and yummy.  We also had more matzos, olives, grapes, more charoset, and washed it all down with more "wine."

Everything was just delicious!  But my very favorite part of the meal was...

dessert, of course.  A simple dessert of plain yogurt drizzled with  honey and topped with dates was perfectly delicious!  Really easy and really, really good.

Dylan is holding a real oil lamp just like the kind Christ would have used (I picked it up at Wal-Mart, of all places, years ago, on clearance.  I picked up one for my mom, but now I kick myself that I hadn't gotten them all!).  It uses plain olive oil for fuel.

Our passover feast was simple, but truly wonderful.  The adults were enlightened as much as the children.  I know that I learned so much, and my testimony of the Savior and his atonement has been strengthened as I prepared and presented this.   Oil in our lamps.

I was just amazed at how much the entire passover speaks of Christ.  It is replete with symbols of and references to  Jesus Christ.  I am equally amazed that the Jews have been doing this, or something similar to this, for thousands of years, and haven't seen Jesus Christ it in all along.   I am grateful that our Heavenly Father loves his chosen people, and all of us, so much, that he has put symbols of Christ and his atonement EVERYWHERE, snuck the wonderful story in anywhere He could, in hopes that we might understand his great and perfect plan for us.  He is a loving parent who tries to help us in any way he possibly can.  When we look and see, our testimonies are strengthened.

If you are considering having a passover feast with your family next year, I would suggest two books:  A Christ-Centered Easter, by Janet and Joe Hales, which has activities, stories, recipes, plays, songs, etc. to celebrate the entire Easter week.  It also has the last week of Christ's life as told by the gospels day by day, set up so that the four gospels are all next to each other, and you can see where the gospels are the same and where they differ.  It is a useful tool.  The other book is Celebrating Passover: A guide to understanding the Jewish Feast for Latter-day Saint Families, by Marianne Monson-Burton.  I don't have the book, but most of my information came from an article I found back in 2004 that she wrote on the same topic.  Really fascinating.  I will be picking up this book, for sure, and devouring it by next year.

Have a wonderful Easter, and even if you can't do a Passover feast with your family, be sure to gather them around you and share your testimony of Christ and the Atonement with them, adding a bit more oil to their lamps and your own.

"And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins."  2 Nephi 25:26