15 Family Easter Traditions To Start This Year

Start your own family Easter traditions this year. Easter isn’t just for egg hunts with little children.

Our list of things to do includes many popular family Easter activities, and we begin with Easter morning.

If the Easter bunny has delivered baskets to your children, they are up early and already excited. It’s a perfect time to begin with a special breakfast.

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15 Family Easter Traditions You Can Start This Year

We are sharing family Easter ideas for the true meaning of Easter, as well as some fun family Easter activities for kids to remember and look forward to each year.

a stack of pancakes with blueberries and strawberries on top

1. Make A Special Easter Breakfast

Start the tradition of making a special Easter breakfast. Traditional Easter food is a huge part of Easter celebrations.

Chances are excellent you will be having a traditional Easter dinner later in the day but Easter is a full day of family activities, going to Grandma’s, and other excursions. So, beginning the day with a special breakfast is ideal. See our list of Breakfast recipes here.

2. Attend Easter Sunday Sunrise Service

The very first thing that comes to my mind about Easter Sunday is to attend a local Easter Sunrise Service. Many cities have a community-wide non-denominational Sunrise service.

You pretty much always need to take your own chair and probably a blanket, as the weather is still cool. Attire is usually casual. Check your local listings.

3. Go To A Traditional Easter Church Service

There will be a special musical program or play presented on Easter at church. The participants have likely been practicing for many weeks, and these programs are usually very good to attend.

Sometimes at larger churches, there will be multiple dates for these performances. Check your local church sites for more information in your area.

If you are anxious about visiting a church on Easter, let me encourage you to go. There are more visitors at church on Easter and Mother’s Day than at any other time of the year, and you will blend right in.

An Easter Egg Hunt sign in the grass next to an Easter basket with plastic eggs

4. Family Easter Egg Hunt

Y’all know the drill. The grown-ups hide the eggs and the kids find them. But there is a more fun way!

Turn the tables on the kids and let them hide the eggs for the adults to find! Yes, it can be such a laugh when adults are competing to see who finds the most Easter Eggs.

5. Community or Church-sponsored Easter Egg Hunt

Do I dare suggest you take your kids to more than one Easter egg hunt? Yes, I do!

In addition to the Egg hunt that will happen with your family on Easter Sunday, take them to either a community or church egg hunt. Oftentimes times there will be prizes given out at these events. Check your local listings to find one.

Easter Bunny Cake decorated with pastel M&M's candies

6. Make an Easter Bunny Cake

Long before the internet existed, way back in what the kids might call ‘the old days, the late 1970s, my mother came across directions for this Easter bunny cake in a magazine. She made one, and the tradition began in my family.

We made them every year for a while. My daughter revived the Easter bunny cake tradition when her kids were little. It’s just plain fun. Gather your kids around while you decorate the cake and let them help. Easter food traditions make sweet memories.

7. Read the Easter Story in the Bible

Begin a new Easter tradition of reading the Easter story in the Bible as a family. You can find it told in all four Gospels in these verses:

  • Matthew 27: 11-66 and Matthew 28
  • Mark Chapters 15 and 16
  • Luke 23: 1-48 and 24: 1-8
  • John 19:1-30 and 20: 1-18

Easter Books for Kids

a family sitting at a picnic table for an Easter picnic

8. Go On A Family Picnic

Once the kids get a little older, they won’t be so interested in egg hunts and traditional foods on Easter. A nice family picnic to welcome Spring and get out of the house after a long winter can become an annual tradition.

It doesn’t have to be fancy food. Pack some sandwiches and chips. Take along the cooler with drinks, and don’t forget to take a trash bag. Most local parks have picnic tables. You could visit a nearby zoo or nature center, or another local museum that provides picnic tables.

Easter basket filled with goodies

9. Make An Easter Basket

By making, I mean filling an Easter Basket. You can fill one big basket for the whole family, with lots of goodies and fun things, keeping each family member in mind.

On Easter morning, place the filled basket in a common place like the dining room table and enjoy watching your family see what’s in it for them. Make it a tradition by doing it every year. Your children will likely repeat the tradition with their own family one day.

You could fill an Easter basket for each of your children. I always kept the same basket for my girls and refilled it each year.

Basket fillers can include candy eggs and toys, and I even put a new swimsuit in my girls’ baskets each year as they got older. They also received a new pair of cheap flip-flops for summer, sunglasses, and other trinkets. Of course, their favorite Easter candy was included and a couple of stuffed plastic eggs.

Buy a pretty Celo bag, like this huge one, to sit the basket in and tie a ribbon at the top for gifting. You can stuff the bottom of the basket with this recyclable paper shred Easter Grass.

Colored Easter Eggs

10. Color Easter Eggs

You don’t have to have children in your home to enjoy the tradition of coloring Easter Eggs.

Coloring eggs has come a long way since we were children. Now there are so many different ways to dye real eggs including using natural elements.

Here are 21 Unique Ways To Decorate Easter Eggs, including my Blue and White paisley eggs. My children are grown, but I decorated these blue paisley eggs for my Spring living room decor.

an outdoor Easter Egg Tree

11. Decorate An Outdoor Easter Egg Tree

Decorating an Outdoor Easter Egg tree is an ancient tradition, quite popular in other countries.

Because the egg is a symbol of life and Easter comes around in the Spring when new life pops out in nature, the egg tree is a perfect symbol for Easter. Follow our Easter Board on Pinterest for ideas.

Grannie and grandkids on Easter
My Mom and 5 of her grandchildren dressed up for Easter pictures. Circa 1983

12. Get All Gussied Up and Take Family Pictures

I grew up in a time when Easter meant shopping for new church clothes. It was a tradition in my family to get a new dress for Easter Sunday. When I was a little girl, that also meant a hat and a matching tiny little white purse and white patent leather shoes.

We don’t necessarily get all dressed up in such frilly attire for Easter pictures but we do still try to snap a few family photos on Easter. It’s a fun family tradition to carry through the generations.

13. Gather For A Traditional Easter Meal

Host a traditional Easter dinner for your family. Our traditional Easter dinners were always huge and were planned for the early afternoon following church. My Mom always fried chicken to go along with baked ham, and everyone was happy to patiently wait for that chicken to get done.

Easter Recipes

a dining table decorated for kids at Easter

14. Set a Fun Kids Table

This is where the Easter crafts come in at my house. It isn’t a lot of trouble to create some whimsy for the kids’ table for any special occasion, like this Kids Easter Tablescape.

When the table is fun, the kids are more likely to sit longer and eat their food. You could also call it the cousin’s table.

Glow in the Dark Easter Eggs

15. Have A Glow in the Dark Egg Hunt

Oh, what fun! End the day with a Glow in the Dark Easter Egg Hunt. Where does one get such a thing as glowing Easter eggs, you ask? Right here on Amazon.

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15 Ways To Start Your Own Family Easter Traditions

  1. Make A Special Easter Breakfast
  2. Attend Easter Sunrise Service
  3. Go to a Traditional Easter Church Service
  4. Have a Family Easter Egg Hunt
  5. Take the kids to a Community or Church Easter Egg Hunt
  6. Make an Easter Bunny Cake
  7. Read the Easter Story in the Bible
  8. Go On A Family Picnic
  9. Make An Easter Basket
  10. Decorate Easter Eggs
  11. Decorate An Outdoor Easter Egg Tree
  12. Get All Dressed Up and Take Family Photos
  13. Gather for a Traditional Easter Meal
  14. Have a Glow in the Dark Egg Hunt
  15. Set a fun Kids Easter Table

What is your favorite Easter tradition? Please share it with us in the comments. We want to know.

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