Holidays are great for traditions. All the big holidays have great traditions with lots of family time and activities people are willing to wait all year for. Thanksgiving, Christmas, Groundhog Day.

But as is so often the case, the biggest seem to have the least. And Easter is the biggest for the Christian community for if not for Easter there would be no Christian community. But still the fewest and the least. There just aren’t those big events we associate with the holiday outside of the church.

It might be because spring is a horrible time for a holiday. The secular season has its own traditions more universal than celebrating a religious commemoration. Spring break, baseball opening day, and high school musicals all compete for the limited attention span of people who have just gone through too many weeks of snow, ice, and freezing temperatures.

My own little family is no exception. Although there are our every year church activities and things we do most of the time, we have but one family tradition we’ve done every year since my daughter was old enough to sit at the table and spill colored water about the kitchen. Dying Easter eggs on Holy Saturday. This year since my dialysis schedule has me sitting in a chair not at the kitchen table most of this Saturday, we rescheduled our egg dying for today, Holy Thursday.

Easter eggs have been a tradition in Italian households for centuries, long before there was an Italy. Early Romans used eggs in their spring festivals to symbolize new life as did early Persians and early Mesopotamians and early Africans and druids and pagans and probably cavemen. Christians just borrowed them because the symbolism works for Christianity too. And for the two of us it works because we get to spend a few hours in each other’s company and catching up with each other and with the season.

Traditions are good for that. Connecting seasons with the people. Take the opportunity this season to start or continue your own tradition. Whatever season you want to celebrate, Easter, Spring or Baseball, can be a chance to make new or stronger connections with the people most important to you.

Happy Easter. (I pick that one.)