Easter isn't Just a Day or even a Season!

We constantly hear, especially from for-profit organizations, about the Christmas Season. Liturgically, that season spans from December 24th/25th to early February. Corporately it runs from sometime around Halloween, but more formally with Black Friday, until Christmas Day.

Easter on the other hand, is treated like a single somewhat random Sunday in the Spring where interestingly most protestants and Catholics in union with Rome agree on, and Orthodox Christians hold to be an altogether different Sunday.

The Incarnation of Jesus is no doubt very important and deserves any and all attention that it can muster from Christian and even secular culture.

However, the birth of Jesus separated from His Resurrection, would be a beautiful tale of a nice teacher, who was wrongfully persecuted for radicalism, and died for that reason. As a thought experiment, think of great teachers and moral authorities who've died for their cause. Did their movement bring about a lasting faith that shaped societies?

The Suffering, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ for our salvation, the forgiveness of our sins, is the ultimate point.

That got me to thinking, why doesn't society give Easter the attention it deserves? Why doesn't the Easter Season receive the reverence and devotion that Ramadan does? Why don't Christians hold esteem for Easter in the way that Jewish people give Passover? (As an aside, perhaps Christians especially lapsed or lightly practicing do, you can't spell C.A.P.E without Easter).

An argument can be made, is that Western Christians especially, are as formed by their secular culture, as they are their faith. So why doesn't secular culture hype Easter the way they do Christmas?

I have a few ideas about that. Most people, even of little or no faith, will celebrate the birth of a child, and I mean any child. (That inclination is so strong, that it doesn't matter that this child was born over 2000 years ago.) Easter on the other hand centers around suffering, death, and then concurring death. It's much harder to market that.

The market also dictates the importance of Christmas. When does secular Christmas formally begin? When Santa Claus rides up at the end of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the crazy black Friday sales kickoff. Nothing says peace and joy like a riot in a supercenter over televisions, and toys!

Perhaps if every Saint Patrick's Day parade ended with the Easter Bunny, and Resurrected Jesus, followed by Pastel Sunday, perchance if we swapped out plastic Easter Eggs for diamonds and golden eggs, society would come around to see the Resurrection as fitting for praise as the Incarnation. Then we'd spend the 50 days allotted to celebrate with Easter Joy!

That brings us to our final point. If Christians live up to the name, as followers of Christ, we have to live in a constant state of time travel. As we celebrate the Incarnation or Christmas, we have to do so in deference to the fact that Jesus suffered, died, and rose from the dead for the forgiveness of our sins, and to conquer death. When we celebrate Easter, we do so in thanksgiving that our all-powerful Creator stooped low, to take on flesh, and experience humanity in all things but sin.

In times of fasting, abstinence and penitence, such as Advent and Lent, there is also a call to remember that we do so in anticipation of Christ's coming again. Through all of these seasons, we must acknowledge the great gift of grace we've received, and treat others equally, as individuals who have received those same gifts we celebrate. Treating neighbors in the reality that they are made in the image and likeness of God, even if, especially if, they do not believe in the same way we do.

A PSA from What in the Word?! IHM