Add candles to your dinner table for the whole Easter season – or year-round, but put them away during Lent. I use four candles, a pair at each end of the dinner table. While they are being lit we sing Doxology, one line as each wick is lit: </P> <P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">Praise God from whom all blessings flow.</P> <P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">Praise God all creatures here below.</P> <P ALIGN=CENTER STYLE="margin-bottom: 0cm">Praise God above, ye heavenly host.</P> <P ALIGN=CENTER>Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.</P>

Easter is not just a day, it’s a season. Leave your Easter decorations up until Pentecost, and add to them (especially during Easter vacation, when a family craft time can be a great relief. Right now, tissue-paper butterflies flutter across my front door, crowd the archway between parlour and dining room, and alight on the rainbow that arches over our Lenten Noah’s Ark picture, symbols of beautiful transformed life emerging from the lifeless remnant of the cocoon.

If you don’t normally put candles on your dinner table, do it at least for for the fifty days between Easter and Pentecost.

Add an ALLELUIA to your table grace or family prayers. We use the Easter greeting after our ordinary grace: Half the family proclaims in unison “Christ is Risen, the other half replies “Christ is Risen indeed”, and then everyone shouts together “ALLELUIA!” Consider using the Collect for Easter for your family table-grace. </P> <P ALIGN=CENTER>The next three festivals are days which I missed sharing with you when, due to stressI missed the deadline for the last Shepherd.