Something Whimsical: My Favorite Easter Tradition

Traditions are filled with joy and whimsy. Every family has their own traditions. Many come into play around the time of a holiday. Some traditions are centered around food, events, activities, decorations or a combination of these things.

Traditions help us connect to different generations, give us something to look forward to and help us create memories. Getting to include my family traditions and create new ones was something I looked forward to when we were thinking of starting our family.

With Easter right around the corner, I have been thinking a lot about my childhood Easter traditions. Growing up, we had all kinds of bunny and Easter decorations. My mom loves spring, gardening, sandals, pastel colors and everything about Easter. We would dye eggs most years and did egg hunts when we were little. We had beautiful Easter baskets that my mom stenciled for each one of us and she took lots of care finding the perfect things to put in our baskets and still does to this day.

Thinking back on my childhood Easters, there was one element that stood out most vividly in my memory… our Easter tree.

My brother and sister and I would get Easter ornaments in our baskets or one to share depending on what my mom could find that year. Our Easter tree and Easter ornament tradition were really special.

At the end of March, we would get out the Easter decorations, the trees, and the ornaments. We would have a great time decorating our living room. When we were done the room really put a smile on our faces and I knew it made my mom happy when she would come into the room and see her beautiful Easter decorations. My favorite part of our decorating tradition was the Easter tree and carefully deciding where to put each ornament.

Our Easter Tree was special to me because it felt unique to my family. Most people I knew had Easter baskets and did egg hunts, but I did not know anyone else who had an Easter tree.

After a quick web search, I learned Easter trees are very common in Scandinavian and Germanic heritage. Finding this out was pretty cool, I am mostly of Scandinavian heritage (Swedish, Danish and Norwegian), but some German too.  Scandinavian Easter trees are typically indoors covered with beautiful feathers. Here is a great link I found to more Swedish Easter traditions from www.thelocal.se, Swedish news in English.

German Easter trees are typically outside, and they are usually covered with eggs that have been blown-out and carefully decorated. There was an Easter Tree in Germany that boasted almost 10,000 eggs. The couple who decorated this tree retired in 2015, but you can see amazing images of it via Google images, just search Easter Tree!!

Since my family comes from both Scandinavian and Germanic heritage, I want to enjoy both traditions with my boys.

Scandinavian Inspired Easter Tree

My mom was kind enough to give me her second Easter tree, keeping her original that we had when were really young. She also gave me my Easter ornaments, so I could start this tradition with my boys.

Places to find a Little Tree

Recently, while on one of my weekly Target runs, I saw some little Easter trees, they don’t look like they would hold too many ornaments, but still could be very cute. I would think craft stores like Michael’s, Joann’s or Ben Franklin’s might also have some trees.  I love that many of the trees you can find are blank canvases and could be used it for all kinds of holidays. This year I used my Easter Tree to make a Valentine’s Day Tree.

Make Your Own Easter Tree

You could also make your own by gathering sticks outside, you could paint them or leave them. You will also need a vase and glass vase fillers.  Use craft glue to decorate with traditional colored feathers or my favorite pom-poms. The feather and pom-poms ornaments are nice because they are lightweight. I think I will try to make my own more traditional Scandinavian Feather Tree in the coming weeks if I do I will update this post.

Make Your Own Easter Tree Ornaments

I used cute Easter foam stickers and bakers twine in-between two stickers. I purchased the twine and the foam stickers last year at Target, but you could probably find something similar at a craft store.

German Inspired Outdoor Easter Tree

Once I saw the images of the outdoor Easter trees; I knew I had to have one. I won’t be making the real eggs that you blow out of, seems like a lot of work and messy. It has been raining and snowing a lot in the Pacific Northwest; I would be really upset if the real eggs got broken after all that hard work.  I think plastic eggs from Target or the dollar store will work fine for me.

Here is what I used

Plastic Easter eggs with holes in the tops or bottoms.  I happened to have some different sizes.

Embroidery thread

Washi tape

I put the embroidery thread through each hole in the top of the egg, tied a knot on the inside. Closed the egg and then put some washi tape around the seam to add a bit more color and to help it stay closed.

We started with 7 eggs and found a little tree outside, where they could reach the branches.  The boys had a lot of fun hanging them up.

Adding a new element to a beloved childhood tradition has been a blast. I plan to add new ornaments to both of our Easter trees in the years to come.

I hope this post inspires you to add a little more whimsy to your spring holidays or any favorite holiday for that matter. If you make your own indoor and/or outdoor Easter Tree I would love to see it!!

Share a picture of your Easter Tree on Instagram using the hashtags, #discoveringwhimsy and #whatsyourwhimsy

Cheers, Amy