Easter And Passover Celebrating During A Pandemic
If there’s anything families around the world are revealing as we enter the Passover and Easter Holiday’s, it’s the English proverb, “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
With people under various restrictions on movement, including stay-at-home orders and self-quarantine, families are devising other ways to observe the spring holidays. They include streaming online Easter church services, hosting virtual Passover Seder dinners, holding family-only egg hunts in the backyard and more.
The goal is to comply with social distancing guidelines by celebrating together but apart to prevent further spread of the coronavirus. However, some families may still be planning to celebrate the holidays with extended family as they usually would something experts say should not happen.
Many people have a powerful need and desire to be with family during the holidays. This is both for the fellowship and to provide support.
That reality may short out their capacity to appropriately weigh that desire against the risk of disease. In addition, we’re used to associating contagious diseases with the demonstration of obvious symptoms or distress. So, the absence of those may also cause people to ignore the very real dangers of potential infection.
The virus can be spread by people who aren’t showing symptoms, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here are some ways you can celebrate Easter or Passover this year and create fond memories in the middle of all the chaos.
How to celebrate Easter
A central theme across planning for religious holidays this year is to do it virtually.
We are speaking of downloading video conferencing for the holiday. Easter and Passover has always been big in the clarity family so we wanted to ensure we still celebrate it.
Families don’t have to hold back on dressing up this year. families plan to mimic the Front Steps Project, where photographers (from a distance) take portraits of families posed near their front steps. You can set up a tripod so they can still take a family Easter photo even without a photographer.
It is a way to get dressed instead of staying in your pajamas all day and being depressed that you’re not seeing family.
The family’s evening activities are made possible by Clarity’s 3CX Video conferencing. This way, the extended families can still have dinner, coffee and dessert together; play charades and other games; and allow the kids to see their cousins.
Even though we can’t physically be next to each other, we still can be with each other. We can still have all the same conversations and enjoy each other’s company.
If you’re concerned about missing church on Easter Sunday, you can attend an online service or search for a drive-in service in your area. Maybe participate in a virtual egg decorating contest.
Some people are organizing Easter egg hunts in their neighborhoods. It sounds counterintuitive to social distancing guidelines, but it works by families hanging pictures of Easter eggs on their front door or windows.
Parents can then take turns walking their kids around the block to find which homes have eggs. The eggs will have a number next to them so children can keep track of how many they find without picking them up.
An adult in the neighborhood can also organize a social distancing visit from the Easter Bunny by donning a costume and waving to little ones from afar.
People who have been diagnosed with Covid-19 should not participate (stay inside!), nor should they be preparing eggs to hide on their lawns or porches, in case young children impulsively rush to pick them up.
Honoring the Passover Seder
A virtual easter as well as Passover Seder has been the way to go this year, but it can be complicated because it’s more than “just a communal family dinner”.
It is taking part from beginning to end in the actual service, the Seder of how we remember each step, and how we left Egypt, and how we were led to Israel and everything in the middle of that journey.
Typically, extended families and guests come together for the Seder. This year, many will celebrate the Seder via Video Conferencing with family members who are all in different states: a husband is in Florida, while their daughter is in New York and a son is in Pennsylvania.
Families hosting virtual easter as well as Seders can still organize who will take on which roles, including the readers of the Haggadah and which children or young adults will read the four questions.
When the time comes for a piece of matzoh to be hidden and then found after the meal, each family can do so in their individual home. Families can still tell stories together, say blessings and sing songs of praise during the dinner.
It’s sustaining who we are as a people, and this is so important to us, that we recognize the significance of this particular holiday, that we have a stronger obligation to keep it, maintain it, to share it and not forget.
Clarity Technologies Group Wishes You Very Happy Passover and also suggest that you keep social distance during this pandemic. #StayHome #StaySafe.