Why I Like Easter More Than Christmas

Every year the world celebrates the Incarnation, the beyond-comprehension truth that Jesus set aside His deity and willingly became a single microscopic cell inside the pitch black of Mary’s womb. Think about it. The immense eternal Light of the World willingly buried His light for nine months. At His birth, Jesus, our eternal God, appeared as a warm, cuddly baby.

But without the cross, Christmas would mean nothing. We know that is true, but ...

Christmas gets all our attention. My attic declares this overindulgence by the number of plastic bins stacked one on another, filled with Christmas decorations. Does yours, too? How many bins dedicated to Easter’s celebration do you bring out every year? The point is we Christians are following the world’s emphasis rather than the Bible’s emphasis.

Easter is not about a birth, but a death, which begs the question: When was the last time you wanted to gaze on a bloody, mangled body? Is the thought even too much? The answer: yes.

We turn away because it’s too much to absorb. It’s so much easier to celebrate a baby’s birth.

Even though we understand Easter’s facts, we eagerly anticipate and prefer Christmas. The story of the teenage virgin who bravely birthed a tiny baby king is a much happier one. Our hearts long to drink in the newness, the hope wrapped in downy soft newborn flesh.

Most of us give Easter little thought, time, or preparation. Like the sudden appearing of a rabbit in early spring, Easter sneaks up on us as we are recovering from Christmas’ excess. As a result, we take a minimalist approach to celebrating the greatest event of history. Like the blind following the blind, Christians have adopted softer, gentler symbols for Easter: bunnies, chicks, chocolate candies in colorful plastic eggs, and pastel clothing.

Do you feel the difference between these two events?

This is the conundrum of our Christian faith—that Jesus was born to die. The innocence of His birth stayed with Him to His last breath on the cross. There He hung—naked, tortured—and there He died. Willingly, He endured all of this for us because of infinite love.

Because of this difficulty we falter, not knowing how to celebrate Easter. The necessity of a blood sacrifice isn’t welcome in daily conversation. The sweetness of the Christmas babe being lullabied by His angelic choir is easier to embrace.

We, the redeemed, have wrongly reversed our affections. We ignore what Jesus commanded us to do–remember His death (1 Corinthians 11:23-26). He never asked us to commemorate His birth, which means we are not following our Savior’s instructions.

The more I’ve learned about Holy Week, Good Friday, and the miraculous events of Jesus’s entire life leading up to Easter, the more I’ve come to understand how central Easter is to our faith. As much as I like Christmas, I now like Easter more ... because Jesus came to die. He accomplished salvation for you and me and that is why Easter must be celebrated with more effort and enthusiasm!

Here are four ways to begin correcting our upended thinking:

1. In your home, fully display the importance of this holiest of holidays. The true colors of Easter are red, white, and gold ... not springy hues of pink, yellow, and lime green. Remember His blood, the color of red wine; remember His risen appearance, blinding and dazzling white; remember His victory worthy of a crown of gold!

This year consider wearing all white or shades of off-white and soft khaki on Easter Sunday. Set an all-white table with lots of white candles for your Resurrection Day feast to remember the purity of His life and death. Or center your table with a white lamb to celebrate our future as His bride at our marriage to the Lamb when we will be dressed in “fine linen, bright and pure—for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints” (Revelation 19:8).

2. Worship with exuberance what Christ has done for us on Resurrection Sunday. Can you imagine what the women who went to the tomb felt when they saw Jesus alive? What about the disciples, and the multitudes? Like a groom who first sees his bride, I imagine beaming faces, tears of happiness, pure delight, and overflowing joy. And I picture dancing. Psalm 149:3 invites us to “praise His name with dancing, making melody to Him with tambourine and lyre!”

This is the kind of worship the Resurrection calls for. Does your Easter day look like this? It should. St. Augustine wrote, “Learn to dance, so when you get to heaven the angels know what to do with you.” I want to be ready. Will you join me?

3. Celebrate the sacrifice and miracle of Easter with others. When we understand more of the immensity of His sacrifice, our gratitude will lead to a celebration—with laughter and music and feasting—far surpassing that of Christmas.

Get creative! Make your Easter party grand, and if weather permits, have your lunch or dinner feast outside with lights and music and revelry. Invite friends and neighbors just as we do at Christmas. Easter, the celebration of the cross and the Resurrection, should be a time of contagious, overflowing evangelism.

N.T. Wright wrote, “Easter is about the wild delight of God’s creative power … we ought to shout Alleluias instead of murmuring them. We should light every candle instead of only some. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the Resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? This is our greatest festival. Take Christmas away and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke. Take Easter away and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have Christianity.”

4. Continue focusing on Easter after Resurrection Sunday. This year we’re offering three weeks of Eastertide email devotions on my Substack site. I wrote these to help myself and you remember in the days between Easter and Pentecost, a total of 50 days, many of the wonders of Jesus’s life, death, and Resurrection.

I hope you will join me in lengthening your celebration of Easter by reading the daily devotions I wrote for Eastertide. Click here to subscribe to Substack and we’ll send you these devotions.

Incarnation and Resurrection are inseparably linked. Our celebrations of these miraculous events need to be proportionate and more balanced in our focus and attention. Don’t shy away from Easter, instead elevate it to the status it deserves. Your faith and that of others will benefit. As John Coe, professor at Biola University, writes, “As I grow older in the faith, I find that I am invited by the Spirit to learn to give up the project of moralism, of trying to fix myself by my spiritual efforts. Rather, I want to open myself more deeply to Christ’s work on the cross and the work of the Spirit in my life.”

Awed by the cross, Easter truly is my favorite holiday.

I hope you’ll join me and others in focusing on the miraculous wonders of Easter and become #easterpeople too! The heart of Christianity is not what we must do, but what He has done! For us!

Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed!

Hallelujah!