Well it’s not like there’s an insufficient quantity of wine at these things or anything… 
But it was kind of fun. The kids were truly shocked about the wine and asking how Elijah could drink it when he’s a ghost. That was probably the most focused / interested they were the whole evening.
As a Christian it was sort of reminiscent of leaving cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve and finding that he’d eaten them the next morning.
Except over a much shorter time frame and with wine.
I have never heard of having a participant drink Elijah’s wine. We used to sit around the table looking for a ripple when he took a sip.
This year i gave Elijah some grape juice that i bought a year ago. The bottle was still sealed, but it tasted a little like raisins, and i decided that by the time Elijah made it to our house he’d be too drunk to notice the difference. After the meal, i poured whatever he didn’t drink down the sink.
(My husband is a teetotaler, so we always serve both wine and grape juice for passover. I found some fresher grape juice for the solid people to drink.)
We had a zoom passover. I cooked for four households, and we had seven households on zoom. After that service, the households ate supper separately, and then we had a non-ceremonial family zoom with another branch of the family. It was nice. Maybe next year we can meet in person.
Interesting… maybe that (having Elijah drink the wine while the kids are looking for him) is just a twist in this particular woman’s family.
I did notice that the Haggadah didn’t say anything about it, but I figured that if the kids are old enough to read then it wouldn’t…
The older kid tonight was almost 6 and sort-of reading a little. Next year he’ll be reading like a champ but probably still young enough to believe that Elijah came and drank his glass of wine.
He was also kind of thrown that the pages were “backwards” in the book. He’s not used to books working that way.
Have you had a little to drunk, Ms Ball?
maybe she just thought that it would be funny to get the goy to chug wine. 
Heh, maybe! But we hang out a lot. They invited me because I’m basically in their bubble.
I certainly got the strong impression that this is just how her family does it. And logistically I was definitely closest to the wine.
The kids were so fun with that. When they came back in the mom was like “you guys missed Elijah! While you were outside he came in and sat down with us!”
“Really?!?!?!” Their eyes were so big, especially the older boy’s.
“Yeah, look at his glass!”
“Mom, it’s empty! How did he do that? How can a ghost drink wine? I can’t believe Elijah was really here and we missed it! Did you talk to him?”
“Yeah, he wished us a Happy Pesach and Miss Twig and I wished him a Happy Pesach too!”
“I hope I get to see Elijah next year!”
(And she mentioned that they kind of skipped Passover last year because of Covid and she wasn’t prepared to do it all by herself. But she’d been planning on this one for a while. So the boy hadn’t been to a Passover since he was 3.)
sorry I missed this thread earlier
the drinking from Elijah’s cup, was their own thing. but sounds fun.
we had a real seder this year, people, still only a 10 minute service. everyone was vaccinated or had COVID recently. 11 people, plus four visitors for dessert.
only COVID disappointment were none of the kids who live out of town could come
Alas, i am a poor typist even when sober.
Yeah, drinking the wine when the kids aren’t looking does sound fun.
It sounds like it was a nice seder. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
In traditional years someone will hide a piece of matzo (afikoman) at the beginning of the meal, and the kids have to go search for it before we can end the meal. They may negotiate for a treat in exchange for the afikoman. This year, we asked our adult daughter, who was closest to it, to hide the afikoman. She literally put it underneath the matzo holder, making a show of “you didn’t see this”.
One year my uncle bought a lot of rubber frogs, and when we got to the ten plagues he threw the frogs to various children in the room. (They had an enormous seder, three tables in a “u” shape in a huge room, with maybe a dozen people at each table.) Frogs went flying around the room for quite a while after that.
The seder is also the first time most kids get drunk. Let’s just say no one was watching exactly how much wine was being consumed at the “tweens” table at my uncle’s house.
I used to spend every passover with them, since it corresponded with spring vacation, and one of my cousins was my age.
That’s the uncle who died of covid a year ago. 
I learned he was sick because i called him to see if i could share a zoom seder with him. He died shortly after, during passover. My aunt died shortly after.
Yeah, they did that. Not surprisingly, the older boy found it. He got $1 for finding it.
That sounds fun!
I need someone to invite me to their Feast of Seven Fishes
I am also available for that, should you want to share. 
I saw a replay of SNL doing a sketch of Kamala Harris hosting a “unity seder”. It wasn’t particularly funny, but clearly they had given some thought into how to screw up a Seder so I thought of this thread. Ted Cruz showed up with cupcakes decorated with Israeli flags and pigs in a blanket.
She was definitely not drinking Manischewitz either, and through a complete coincidence I happened to bring the exact same wine that they had. Three bottles for three people. Which makes sense since you drink 4 glasses, which is how much a bottle has.
She was kind of going back & forth between two. Mostly English, but some Hebrew. As the only Jewish adult, she read all of the Hebrew parts, but the husband and I also read. The 5.5 year-old declined the opportunity to show off his new reading skills.
Yep, she had nuts and several kinds of dried fruit and apples for us to snack on while we were reading some of the first part. Then matzoh ball soup, later salmon & asparagus, and several kinds of both homemade and store bought meringues with fruit and honey for dessert. All delicious. I think there was a salad… too drunk to remember exactly. I was offered cut up hard-boiled egg at some point but declined and I don’t think I offended anyone.
Yep, kids did that.
Yep, parsley
Yep, even the kids. We dipped our fingers in the wine and then tapped them on our plates. So we had wine all over our plates. But we were basically done with that course by then so no biggie.
With, which is good because I don’t really like horseradish. And the wife was complaining that it was too bland, which was fine by me!
Nope, thankfully, as I would have had to decline or not eat it.
Yes, yes, and yes.
I hadn’t appreciated what a kid-centric holiday this was until participating in one with a family with kids.
horseradish is great.
i didn’t realize it was a kid-centric holiday. i more thought of it as an excuse for adults to get drunk on wine in the name of god.
Well maybe we had a more kid-friendly Haggadah than some, but the kids were the ones to open the door for Elijah and go look for him. We said a prayer about Miriam and Rebecca and Leah and Rachel that specified that we were to lay our hands on the heads of all the girls. There was the part about the kids searching for the hidden matzoh. And of course asking the questions.
It was more kid-involvement than I was expecting.
Well definitely some of that too! I was definitely glad I could walk home.