If Bill O’Reilly, Jerry Falwell, and the rest of the crusaders fighting for the replacement of “Merry Christmas” for “Happy Holidays” in buisiness and government are all aflutter becuse their religous holiday has become secular, why did they keep their mouths shut through Easter?
I’m not a christian, but IIRC, Easter commemorates the central miracle of Chistianity, J.C.'s rebirth. Christmas celebrates J.C.'s birth. Everyone’s born, but how many people are reborn? On Christmas, all through December we hear Christian hymns and choral music devoted to the religous meaning of Christmas everywhere we go. If I’m buying slacks in Macy’s, I get to hear “JOY TO WORLD, THE LORD HAS COME!” while I look for slacks in my size. On Easter, there are egg dye kits and chocolate bunnies for sale. It seems to me that Easter’s far more secularlized than Christmas, and far more important in Christianity? Why target the latter?
Call me crazy, but maybe the issue has nothing to do with religion.
Because it’s not Easter. Right now, people are thinking about Christmas (or other winter holiday) and so have more of a reaction to things that have to do with Christmas, than with Easter. If they’re going to get upset about Easter, they’ll do so in April.
Of course this has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with control. Non-Christians’ selfish insistence on not wanting to be wished “Merry (holiday that they don’t celebrate and might even find outright blasphemous)” pisses these people off, and some Christians’ willingness to grant this courtesy pisses them off even more (Don’t they know that non-Christians are just conversion fodder?).
I think we don’t hear these folks complaining about Easter observance (or lack thereof) for two reasons:
(1) Easter hasn’t been mucked up with secular observance to the extent that Christmas has. There just isn’t an “Easter season” the way there is a “Christmas season.” So, it’s much harder to claim that the religious message of Easter is being diluted by commercialism, nominal observance by non-Christians, etc.
(2) Easter, as you noted, commemorates a miracle which is central to most streams of Christian belief. But this isn’t about religion - it’s about control. It’s not about encouraging Christians to remember what they believe, and why. It’s about some Christians making themselves feel superior by making non-Christians feel smaller.
This, for me, is the dividing line between “the Religious Right” and conservative and/or evangelical Christianity. Most of the conservative and evangelical Christians I’ve known are pretty happy to let it be known that they have a particular relationship with G-d and they’d be delighted if everyone cultivated such a relationship, but they’re satisfied to let it go at that. The “Religious Right” is a political movement that happens to use Christian imagery and language to justify its goals. Being a political movement, it allows no room for dissenting belief and practice.
And they do, although not as much. I remember as a high-schooler hearing about a preacher that had a rabbit-bake every Easter to protest against the heathenization of the holiday.
I do think it’s a little weird that Christians hereabouts celebrate Christmas more than Easter. When I was a teenager, our family traveled to Guatemala during the week before Easter (what’s it called? Pentecost or something?) In Flores, the city we stayed in, there are jaw-dropping processions every day: people make streetwide mosaics out of flowers, and then floats depicting scenes from the story (the Last Supper, Jesus’s betrayal, Jesus versus Pontius Pilate, etc.) are borne through the streets on the backs of dozens of men who trample the mosaics beneath them. It culminates on Good Friday with the streets clogged by these processions and mosaics, preceded by boys waving incense censers that fill the streets with thick aromatic smoke.
On Easter Sunday, we saw a total of one procession: about a half dozen people carried a tiny little float depicting Jesus’s resurrection, while a half dozen more played “When the Saints Come Marching In” on brass instruments.
It really took me aback, but in retrospect, it makes sense. The central concept of Christianity is not that Jesus was Born for your sins, nor that Jesus was Resurrected for your sins: it’s that Jesus Died for your sins. And the folks in Flores got that right, where Christians here are off on a tangent.
Of course, I’m not a Christian, so I don’t say this as serious theological criticism; rather, as an outsider, the Guatemalan approach looks more consistent to me.
IMHO Christmas is lost, no longer a Christian holy day. It is a capitalist holiday where people worship money and greed. I think it should be abandoned by Christians and the birth of Christ reassigned to a day closet to when it suspected to be. This way Christmas could be a day for everyone.
Easter is a bit different, yes there is a ever growing capitalist aspect to it, but it still a Christain Holy day.
They could come up with some bizarre formula for calculating the date Christmas falls on. Perhaps Easter’s just too much of a moving target to get too commercialized.
Hmmm I never though of that, it could be somewhat harder due to it moving year to year. Perhaps the Pope should set the day of Christmas every year on Dec 25th the year before.
(yes I know that the Pope is the leader of the RCC, not all Christians)
Pentecost is the observation 40 days after Easter Sunday to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit. The week before Easter is Holy Week; the forty days before Easter is Lent.
Christmas is actually a rebirth ritual also. It’s celebration is that of the solstice, which is the celebration of the dying of the solar year, and the birth of a new one, when the days are becoming successively longer instead of successively shorter as happens on the summer solstice. It strikes a deeper resonant chord with people as it coincides with a major transition that we all go through, and we celebrate, most of all, warmth, as we enter the coldest part of the year. So I think part of the answer is that Christmas resonates more with non-Christians than Easter, and people sense this on some level, and confuse it with support for their religious holiday.
Another thing is that Easter is only one day/weekend. When I think about the “holiday season,” I don’t just think of Christmas–to me, the holidays encapsulates Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s, and all the days in between, with Hanukkah and Kwanzaa thrown in there somewhere. (That’s one reason I find the dislike of the phrase “happy holidays” so bizarre; to me, Christmas is ONE DAY, but “the holidays” last all month. Happy Holidays is more technically correct than Merry Christmas unless it’s actually December 25.) Because there are no surrounding holidays and parallel holidays with other religions (except for Passover, but that skips around too so they’re not even close to one another and I can’t think of any time Passover has ever been commercialized in fact I’m willing to bet there’s Christians/seculars who haven’t even heard of it), there isn’t as much of an “Easter spirit” to be had.
Also, secular Easter just isn’t as widespread as secular Christmas. While my (secular American, celebrates-Christian-holidays-yet-doesn’t-even-baptize-their-kids) family celebrates it by having a nice dinner and painting eggs and giving candy baskets, I know lots of people who don’t celebrate it at all. Whereas everyone I know celebrates some form of winter holiday, whether they call it Christmas or Xmas or Solstice or whatever. As a secularist, I think of Easter on the same level as Halloween in the important holidays list. A nice, fun holiday, but not as important as the Big C or the Big T.
And also I think the iconography of the death and resurrection of Jesus isn’t as commercially viable as the iconography of the birth. As in, if you go to the store you can find all sorts of commercial renderings of Jesus’ birth that even make me uncomfortable–huge plastic nativity lawn scenes, N*Sync singing “O Holy Night.” Jesus and Santa are all mucked up with one another. After all, Santa himself is a Christian saint! But the rabbits-and-eggs motif is so far divorced from religion that it doesn’t even seem connected with Christianity. At least, it seems that way in America.
While I certainly agree on your assessment of the situation, Holy Week and Lent are definately as long a period as the “Holiday Season” so I’m not sure how correct the idea that you couldn’t stretch Easter merchandising out ofer six weeks is.
Yeah, but there’s not too much marketing you could do for Lent. Unless it’s “stop yourself from not taking advantage of these Lent sales down at Crazy Eddie’s!” It’s not an event made for commercalization. Although I guess Mardi Gras could be considered part of the “Easter season” and that’s certainly commercial.
Eep. It’s not just that Jesus died, but that He rose again, conquering death forever. The resurrection is essential–the temple has been destroyed and in three days built up again.
The pageantry you describe takes place to a lesser degree throughout Holy Week here too, it’s just that by Easter Sunday the big processions and services have been completed. Easter Vigil on Saturday night before Easter (which “counts” for Easter) is The Big Deal and Sunday it’s time to go to Mass and then be around the home to celebrate rather than out at church. Or in the streets .
Catholics and other Christians would have since it’s mentioned as part of the Holy Week Scripture readings, since the Last Supper takes place then.
It bugs me too how Christmas and Easter as well to a lesser extent get started so early, when there are all kinds of things that happen in the Church before the actual feast day. Like putting out Easter candy on Good Friday. It’s a day of fasting and plus, He’s got to die before He can rise. DON’T RUSH THE CANDY!!
[Eddie Izzard]
So, yes.
The pagans had big festivals on Easter and Christmas.
Christians had big festivals at Easter and Christmas.
Jesus died on one and was born on the other. Hm-hm-hm-hmm?
Cos…Jesus I do think did exist.
He was a guy who had interesting ideas in the Gandhi area, the Nelson Mandela area - relaxed and groovy.
The Romans thought, “Relaxed and groovy? No.”
So they murdered him.
Kids eat chocolate eggs because the color of the chocolate and the color of the wood on the cross…
Well, you tell me. It’s got nothing to do with it, has it?
People are going, “Remember kids, Jesus died for your sins.” “Yeah, I know, it’s great.” “No, it’s bad.” "It’s bad. lt’s terrible. “Whatever you want. Just keep giving me these eggs.”
And the bunny rabbits, where do they come into the Crucifixion? There were no rabbits going, "You putting crosses in our warrens? “We live below this hill, all right?”
Bunny rabbits are for shagging, eggs are for fertility.
It’s the spring festival.
[/Eddie Izzard]
Actually, the Christmas season by the liturgical church calendar is traditionally twelve days that begins on Dec. 25 and ends with the the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan 6.
Because harrassing people at Easter doesn’t hit them where it hurts.
I grew up in a very secular family, and yet Christmas was still a blockbuster event. It’s the only time my whole family gets together. We cook a big dinner that is the same as the ones my great-grandparents ate when they were little. We exchange gifts and that partially serves as a way of making sure that family members in need get helped out- it’s not unusual for a few supermarket giftcards and stuff like that to make their way in to the mix. We have a tree and hundreds of ornaments that each have a special memory attached to them. It’s the centerpiece of our year, and really the only holiday that most of America, young and old, goes all out on.
It’s a time of love and family and tradition and sharing. The commercialization is there, but on Christmas morning it doesn’t make it past the front doorstep. On that morning the fire crackles, the kids wake up, Grandma is already cooking, the air smells like pine, and we all feel loved and comfortable and ready to celebrate our family.
And this is what the radical Christians want to take away from me. Have your Easter- have the hams and crosses and bunnies and whatever. I don’t care about that. For secular families Easter is just a big dinner and some activites for the kids. They could take it or leave it.
But when you start telling people that they need Jesus in order to enjoy spending time with their families, and that they need sermons in order to celebrate, and that they can’t have their holiday unless they accept a boatload of baggage, it upsets them. And that is what they are going for. To delegitimize us. To make us angry. To punish us.
And Easter just doesn’t matter enough to be a good weapon.
[hijack]Forty seems to be quite significant. In addition to the above mentions, the rains for Noah’s flood lasted forty days and forty nights. The Israelites journeyed in the desert for forty years after escaping from Egypt. Anyone know the significance of forty?[hijack]
Based on its use in the Bible, 40 is thought by some Christian denominations to represent the number of trial or probation. It rained for 40 day and 40 nights. Jonah was in the whale for 40 days. Moses sojourned on Mt. Horeb for 40 days. Jesus meditated in the desert for 40 days. It’s 40 days from Easter to Pentecost.
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