Jesus held on the cross with nails in his hands

I'm Catholic and my three have recently made their first Holy Communion. The littlest can tell you that Christ suffered a scourging, a bloody sweat, a crown of thorns and was nailed to the cross. It was a highly unpleasant experience where Christ suffered for our sins. So I'm not quite sure how it can be taught in any other way or it entirely mitigates the message.

For what it's worth, no one in the First Holy Communion class seems very perturbed or disturbed by it all.

When ds was 4 he wanted to know all about Easter , I told him a child friendly mild version but at school he asked and got told the story and then other kids added more details. When we had hot cross buns he said ‘we should have jam doughnuts instead because of all the blood oozing out of Jesus’ hands ‘ I hadn’t been expecting that at all!

Command strips?

To be fair Easter is about sacrifice... That's it. She'll get over it I promise... Some of my kids did a bit of Catholic school, stations of the cross etc and my DH did all the way to Sixth Form without any Jesus related PTSD.

This is an excuse for my favourite Gesthemane. It does depict cruxifixion pictures though

Penny for the guy?

Penny for the guy?

Easter was originally a germanic pagan festival celebrating spring, fertility and renewal.

Bunnies and eggs > than jesus and crosses

tangledupp
'Well the teacher can't really say they stuck him up there with velcro*

That made me laugh out loud!!!!

Reminds me of going to my nephew's wedding a few years ago... Lord of the Dance was on the order of service. Unfortunately whoever typed it up was either spectacularly dim, or had never sung it...

'They whipped and they stripped and they hung me on high,
And left me there on a cross to DRY..'

We did not make it through the hymn with a staight face....

Easier was originally a pagan festival that celebrated spring and new life. So yes it kinda is about bunnies and eggs.

If he had been hanged, would there now be ropes in churches with a body hanging from it?

When my son was 6 I overheard him pretending to crucify his brother against a wall, using a toy Black and Decker electric drill.

His brother, then age 5, complied quite happily but then ended the game by jumping away from the wall and shouting “Anyway, I’m alive again!”. I found myself thinking that the school had done a good job in getting the story across!

They are now 15 & 14 and I promise you that no long-term harm has been done!

I'm agnostic these days but was raised Presbyterian and learned about all this in Sunday school. Try not to worry, she's too little to really understand how awful the idea of crucifixion is, even if it's a bit of a shock for her.

But also don't let the fun vacuums on this thread put you off bunnies and eggs and chocolate either! Fancy telling someone to "grow up" when talking about things a literal small child enjoys. Mumsnet never ceases to amaze me.

OP, if you're not careful you'll find yourself the subject of a talk radio programme tomorrow morning as the main feature in its latest instalment on snowflakery on acid.

I had this convo with someone recently. We wouldn't show children photos of someone being hanged. Yet so often we see fairly gruesome pictures / statues of Jesus dying nailed to a cross. I really don't like it.

Well it’s good for her to know the true meaning of Easter and no it’s not all about bunnies and fun.

Well the original meaning comes from the pagan, pre-Christian goddes Eostre and it was a festival of Spring and rebirth, so definitely more fun than nailing people to crosses.

Wasn’t there some pagan festival around springtime before it all became about Jesus? Doesn’t Christmas also have a pagan background (decorated tree etc) prior to Christianity?

Edited to say, sorry I didn’t see the pps above who already mentioned this!

All the people saying that Easter isn’t about bunnies and eggs, you know it was about bunnies and eggs before Jesus, right?

It's what I learnt at a fairly young age.

As someone said, if your hear the story from a young age, it goes in one ear and out the other and you get used to it.

I grew up reading Grimm's Fairy Tales, all illustrated in gory detail and watched Tom and Jerry battering each other with a flat iron. A man being nailed to a cross was par for the course.

She will be shocked by many things in this life - some children really struggle finding out Easter bunnies, Santa and the tooth fairy are not real 🤷🏽‍♀️.

You will help her get past this like the many children before her.

I mean I don't want to say it's a fact because,'y'know, but it's certainly the received wisdom.

You were more than likely taught it yourself and found it so unremarkable you don't even remember.

It was about spring (pre-Christianity). Bunnies and eggs are symbols of eostre which was pagan.

How grim. I don’t think I’d be super happy about this, hope she’s not upset by it.

Having been to more churches in the past few days than usual (on holiday), there was one scene where the 2 people either side of Jesus were tied to their cross and he was nailed to his cross.

It is part of the story though - with the holes in his hand when he rose again.

Crucifixion was really common in those days, in the era after jesus's death (70 ad ISH) when the Romans destroyed Jerusalem they crucified hundreds of people daily. I think there's pretty good contemporary evidence that jesus was a real historical figure and was crucified. The rising again bit is harder to prove.