How to Host a Midnight Easter Feast

by Liv Booth

You can create a powerful Resurrection celebration at home — in the middle of the night! And I’m here to help.

Lutheran spirituality is incarnational. Jesus gathers up our minds, souls and bodies in Word and Sacrament, and is preserving us in His family until the Last Day, or really the First Day — eternity begins with a Wedding Feast.

Imagine that feast! Really, take a minute and picture it. Is it a banquet hall with many tables? Is it a grassy lawn in the evening, with paper lanterns lighting up a long trestle table? Maybe your imagination takes you to Cana and a loud and colorful Middle Eastern festival? Is there dancing? Is there music?

What about the faces you long to see? Take a few seconds to imagine those smiles. Imagine expressions freed from self-doubt and the conflict that sours relationships on earth. You will see them at that Feast. What about the faces you desperately hope to see? Having them there would be almost unbearable joy!

We may not be there yet, but we can experience, with our senses, a foretaste of that feast to come. Created as an embodied being, I know things by experiencing them. I am splashed with water in Baptism, fed on divine bread and wine in Communion. And then, like a sacramental echo, I hear the call to my life up ahead: “Come to the table!” Literally. It is my great joy to share with you an Easter tradition that has, for years, been central to my family’s life in the church year: Easter Feast. But first, let’s reflect on the days leading up to the Feast.

The Days of Lent: Anchored in Physical Memories

Ashes

Easter Feast is the relief after the long season of Lent, which begins on Ash Wednesday. The imposition of ashes is a powerful moment of submission to reality. Dust you are. To dust you shall return. I find it especially poignant when pastors impose ashes on their wives, children and grandchildren. Our hearts beat calmly as we hear aloud what we all know, “Dear one, you will die.”

Emptiness

Lent looks our mortality, our disappointment and our yearning in the eye, and prepares us for the deep violence and abandonment of Holy Week without which there would be no Easter, no Resurrection — either Christ’s or ours. Growing up, I experienced it mostly by knowing it was Lent and by participating in early morning Matins on Wednesdays. I’ve preserved that feeling of simplicity in our home practices. Nothing complicated, but tactile things that draw us into the story the Lord is telling. Small gestures: a purple cloth in the prayer corner in the kitchen, fewer sweet treats, taking some art down from the walls. Maybe some fasting from distractions or foods. Clearing the way. The deep breath before Holy Week.

Leaves, Bread, Wine, Darkness

We descend from physical anchor to physical anchor through Holy Week, starting with Palm Sunday, in real time with Jesus. Let the kids wave and shred their palm leaves in the pew. See, hear and imagine what Jesus does each day of Holy Week. He cleanses the temple with a whip — hear it crack! He is anointed with perfume — breathe it in! Feel His hands holding a wet rag, washing your feet. Taste the wine and bread yourself during Maundy Thursday service. Welcome your body into the story. My heart is ready, attentive, even full of dread as they strip the altar after Maundy Thursday service. We leave in silence. We know what’s coming.

Give yourself these days to be present. Good Friday services invite us into a contemplative space. Allow your body and mind to rest and receive the words you hear. Allow yourself to imagine the faces and the voices as the familiar passages are read. Do you have fears, burdens, baggage? Lay them on the cross that He carries past you up that hill. Hear Him say to you, “It is finished!” Sit with Him in the darkness and the silence.

Then wait some more. Like the weary and heartbroken apostles, we feel anxious and suspended between worlds. Holy Saturday is where we live. Between now and then. Between “It is finished!” and “Let it begin!” In the meantime, how do we live? I prepare for the inevitable. I prepare for a Feast!

Preparing for the Feast: Taste and See

Here we come to the “How To.” I have only one caution whenever people ask me how to put on their Easter Feast. The caution is “Do everything in freedom!” Easter Feast takes many forms.

My mother began the tradition of a Midnight Easter Feast sometime in the early 1980s. She wanted to create the physical memory of light bursting in on darkness, of the wonderful disorientation of a loud celebration in the middle of the night. The Resurrection was a surprise! Our own will come as a surprise as well! Give yourself, your family, your guests, the physical sensation of life after death. It’s good practice. In the meantime, it stokes our faith, lifts our hearts and makes hope real. Hope tastes like babka, smoked sausage, vodka, rye bread and chocolate eggs.

Here’s how I do it:

Before Holy Week

Invite your guests several weeks ahead of time, and warn them to arrive at 11:45 p.m. sharp. The Feast is powerful whether you have a crowd of five or 40.

During Holy Week

Clean a bit, or a lot, as you like. But give yourself the feeling that “something is coming.” We’ve made at least one little thing better for our home every year in preparation for Easter Feast. Maybe I replaced that light fixture, or bought that new tablecloth.

Gather the tables, chairs, linens, utensils, glasses, serving things.

I make and set aside several things during the week: pickled eggs on Monday, a sweet Russian Easter cheese on Tuesday, sweet and sour cabbage on Wednesday. We have a hasty Passover meal and home liturgy before church on Thursday. Then I make rye braids and roast pork shoulder on Friday.

On Holy Saturday

We hold a total fast, water (and coffee, of course) only. Do this only in total freedom and as you are able! Resolve to be gentle on yourself and others. It’s a tender day, and each hunger pang or temptation to snappishness is a precious invitation to acknowledge your fallenness and to turn your attention to the coming resurrection.

We bake all day. I love this process, but do what is delightful and maybe a little challenging to you. We make chocolate, apricot, spiced plum, and tart cherry/white chocolate babkas. We make saffron-laden kulich to go with the sweet Russian cheese. We make lemon poppyseed cake and Lamby Cake and maybe those gross no-bake Easter nests with the jelly beans. Sometimes I really want them.

The tables are set with white sheets and lace tablecloths. We polish up some silver candlesticks and place potted flowers everywhere: lilies, tulips, hyacinths. We strew Cadburry mini eggs and edible grass on the tables.

We get the kielbasa ready to be boiled in a giant pot, and the red potatoes ready to be roasted. And then … we wait. Almost all is prepared. Now … but not yet. Hungry, tired, heart pounding … but it’s not time yet.

Ok! 10:00 p.m.! The water goes on to boil, the potatoes go in the oven, the cabbage gets heated up, the candles are lit! Lots of little candles in saucers everywhere!

Guests gather in silence out front where my husband leads a time of quiet meditation on some Scripture passages. And then the hush. 11:56 … 11:57 … 11:58 … … “CHRIST IS RISEN!” And the music blares, and the double doors are thrown open and the friends charge in! “HE IS RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA!”

And we can’t help but laugh and cry a little and yell, “Come in! Come in! There’s room over here!” Then a toast with ice-cold vodka, and singing, and eating and knowing with my whole self — body, soul, heart and mind — that the first day of my real life will be a Feast like this. The faces we long for, the ones we hope we will see. I want to smile with them at the Wedding Feast of the Lamb. This is what it feels like to be with my Bridegroom. He’ll heal all that is broken and raise a glass to “I AM RISEN!” and we’ll cry “YOU ARE RISEN INDEED! ALLELUIA!” And maybe we’ll have babka.

For further Easter Feast suggestions including recipes and a preparation timeline, contact Liv at liv@signpostinn.org.

Cover image: The Booth Easter Feast 2024, Courtesy of Liv Booth