Catholic Activity: Easter Breakfast Picnic

This Easter picnic is a festive way to spend time with your family and watch the signs of new life in nature, associated with the Resurrection.

DIRECTIONS

"Come and breakfast!" That is the invitation Christ gave to Peter and John when they landed their great catch of fish, so mysteriously bestowed. They were elated and humbled and weary. It must have been a comfort to find a fire waiting on shore, a fish on it, and bread ready. To commemorate this Gospel of Easter Wednesday, why not a picnic breakfast in our home, or, better, out of it? A party at this hour can be more fun than the usual afternoon-evening spreads, so hard on tired babies and so short on mothers' nerves.

By now you can smell and feel spring throughout the land, even under the crusty layer of leftover snow. The voice of the turtle may not be heard, but all the mittens are lost, and nobody cares. In those sections of our country where spring has really arrived and the violets are lying in wait to be discovered, this can be a picnic of sudden beautiful surprises for everyone. Children who might never have noticed will be amazed that mother isn't as old as they thought. She even knows how to turn a jumprope.

If you live where winter hasn't yet given up the ghost, or if the little ones are really too little to do more than curdle the atmosphere, a picnic on the back porch (or basement, if you have that kind of basement) will be just as exciting to the children. Scrambled eggs with hot ham or bacon in buns wrapped in aluminum foil, individual boxes of dry cereal with companion boxes of raisins, thermoses of cocoa or orange juice — whatever it is in your house that makes a special breakfast should be on the menu. If we mothers are to be catchers of (little) men, we must look to our lures!

City families might breakfast in a nearby park, even if it does shock the squirrels and pigeons. They just have to learn we humans can be carefree too. And our explanations to passers-by, openly curious at our cavorting, may be, for all we know, a chance for spiritual seed-sowing. For apartment-dwellers, patio-less and too far from a park, breakfast on the rooftop can be just as exhilarating as a penthouse cocktail party. More so, since Christ is the Host and the small talk is never boring.

Activity Source: Family Liturgical Customs No. 4: Easter by Ethel Marbach, Abbey Press Publishing Division, St. Meinrad, Indiana, 1964