Easter Family Worship Guide

Christ Church Elders
7 hours ago
2 min read

Celebrating Resurrection Together

Easter is a season—yes, a season!—for rejoicing in Christ’s resurrection victory. As with all seasons of the church calendar, this guide is not meant to add pressure or fill your calendar—it’s meant to gently shape the rhythms you already have.

There is one devotional for each week in Easter season (seven weeks). Choose a consistent day (earlier in the week is better than later) to read the devotional as a family. Read the Scripture, reflect together, and introduce the week’s practice. Let the theme resurface throughout the week—at meals, bedtime prayers, in the car, or during check-ins.

One question or comment is enough—no need to rehash the lesson, just let it set the trajectory for the week.

Parent Orientation

Easter season: What it is, where it came from, and when we observe it.

What Is Easter Season?

While celebrating Easter Sunday is quite familiar to most Christians, the idea of Easter as a season is sometimes not. But for Christians, all our time is ordered by God’s redemption, not only one-off holidays here and there. Just as Lent is a full season of sober self-reflection, so Easter is a full season of the joy that God always ultimately brings his people after sorrow (Psalm 30:5).

A Brief History

Easter was established as a church feast celebrating Christ’s resurrection as early as the mid- to late first century. In the late second century, some regions began further celebrating Easter as a fifty-day feast rejoicing in Christ’s resurrection and ascension and culminating in Pentecost. The Council of Nicaea (325) established a system for calculating Easter’s date each year. The system aimed to roughly link dates for Easter celebrations to the Jewish Passover so the church’s feast would maintain its calendar connection to the date of the very first astonished celebration of an empty tomb and our Lord’s great victory.

What Easter Teaches Our Families

Epiphany reinforced our vocation and Lent provided for self-reflection. Easter season teaches us the discipline—yes, discipline—of celebration.

Christians are, fundamentally, a celebratory people. Our Christ has risen! The self-denial and sober reflection on sin and its consequences during Lent is merely preparatory. The cross is never the goal, but rather always a path leading to God’s glorious resurrection ends. However intense our sorrow, it will ultimately be seen as, in comparison, a “light momentary affliction” which has prepared for us an all-surpassing and enduring joy (2 Corinthians 4:17). Celebrating Easter as a long, full season of restorative, hope-filled gladness—even while acknowledging ongoing loss and grief—reinforces these truths and drives them deeply into us until faith becomes sight.

One practice that Easter season helps to strengthen is that of Sabbath. We are ever tempted to self-sufficiency through ceaseless, tiresome activity. The rushing pace of the modern world only increases this temptation. Ordering our Easter season around eight Sundays of intentional Sabbath and corresponding weekly reflections and practices will be a powerful reinforcement that our resurrected Christ is the one who holds all power and authority, not us, so we can gladly leave that burden on his shoulders where it belongs and restfully bask in the renewal and restoration that he has secured for us.

Dates for Easter Season 2026

Easter season begins Easter Sunday (April 5) and continues until Pentecost (May 24).