I Did An Easter Treasure Hunt With My Mom For My Neighbours’ Children Since Covid-19 Messed Up Tradition.

On a Palm Sunday in Finland, children dress up as witches and go door-to-door to perform “virvonta”. Virvonta or virpominen is done by chanting a blessing rhyme and offering a decorated pussy willow branch in exchange for treats to the person who opens the door. It’s kinda like Halloween, but you have to spend time and effort to decorate branches and give them as gifts in order to receive sweets.

Sadly, as a result of Covid-19 children couldn’t do the virvonta this year because social distancing and self-isolation. My mother and I felt really bad about this, since we’ve always enjoyed this holiday tradition and we were really looking forward seeing the children from our neighbourhood dressed as little witches and warlocks.

There are two young children living next door to us and we were trying to think a way we could do something fun for them today instead of virvonta, while still maintaining social distance. Finally we came up with the idea of a treasure hunt and spent all evening yesterday writing hints in the form of poems and dying bits of paper with tea to make them look more like old treasure maps.

Today I went and hid all the clues and the treasure, and then settled myself on the balcony with my mother to listen to the excited cries coming from outside whenever a clue was found. Hearing the excitement and getting pictures from their mother of the search really made it worth while and made our day. Two fantastically decorated branches also appeared behind our front door a little while after as a thank you.

I wanted to share this story so it might inspire others to spread a little Easter joy to the children who are affected by Covid-19 and show that social distancing shouldn’t stop us from spreading love.