Holy Week traditions

Monday of Holy Week.
Yesterday in the worship service I spoke of the contradictions and contrasts of the day: Palms or Passion? Up or down? Festive joy and innocence with children parading and singing, or silence and solemnity in the sacred scriptures. Bright Sunday or Dark Friday ? Hosanna or Crucify? Some people say that we should pick one or the other! But this is not an ‘either/or.” It is a "both/and.”
Yes it is too much for one worship service...perhaps just as it was too much for a week, centuries ago. . Expectations are conflicted and confused. What next? Easter will only accentuate the feeling of the unexpected.

Today, the day is slower. Holy week has begun. I look ahead to the Thursday evening service with communion and the tenebrea scriptures and the darkness. Good Friday noon service always brings back not just the traditional holy images but also the memory of Sara being born on a Good Friday 19 years ago, in another year with an early Easter. We got our share of light hearted teasing about the kind of timing that was for a parsonage family! It definitely was a case of having too much to do in Holy Week and not knowing what, and when to expect. She arrived in time for me to call the announcement over to Tabor United Methodist Church in Big Stone City, South Dakota, where I had been scheduled as one of the liturgical participants. She came home on Easter Sunday. The day was bright and" risen" and everything was miracle! Beyond anything I could ever expect!
I remember that we had a basket of Easter candy set out in the Ortonville church to celebrate her arrival.
That Easter candy launched a family tradition that the Easter bunny always left a huge basket of Easter candy for Sara and then, Nick, to pass out on Easter to the congregation.
Over the years another Holy week tradition was for us to go to the Dairy Queen in Ortonville after the community good Friday service. Now that we live in Brainerd we have other dining choices available as well, but the tradition says it has to be the Dairy Queen!

So those are some of my Holy Week memories. Old classic church tradition, mixed in with others much more relative to the Swenson household but no less meaningful and sacred. It too, is probably not just a simple case of “either/or”. It is another case of “both/and.”

Holy week is like a scrapbook that continued to collect images as we return to it year after year. I hope you have some traditions to remember and maybe add a page or two. You might have something in there that you didn't expect.