My earliest memory of Shavuot was when I was in 7th grade. We were newly introduced to the understanding of the Hebraic roots of our Christian faith, and learning about the Biblical feasts as a family. A local church hosted a Shavuot celebration and we participated in a play portraying the book of Ruth. It was a family affair. My mom and introverted sister and I were the village women of Bethlehem harvesting in the fields with Ruth, and my very introverted father was the harvest overseer and friend of Boaz. I’m still amazed that my whole family was willing to cooperate to do something on stage.
For me, I will never forget the performance, and thereby, I never forgot the association of the the Holy Day with the story of how God brought a Moabite, a gentile, a foreigner of pagan origin, into His chosen people Israel, and honored her faith so much that he made her the grandmother of king David and ultimately an ancestor of His given Messiah, Yeshua. It has always been God’s heart to bring Jew and Gentile together through Yeshua.
The idea of a Shavuot Pageant or play or musical or read aloud of the book of Ruth is very beneficial to teaching the heart behind the Feast of Weeks and is something you can implement both on a small level in your home, or on a larger scale in your congregation/church.
In your home encourage your children to write a play and act out the story of Ruth. Or appoint your children characters either themselves or with “puppets” and narrate through the book of Ruth while they act it out. You can also simply pick a night during the Omer before the Feast of Weeks to read through the four short chapters of Ruth and discuss it as a family. This is something we plan to do with our kids this year.