I’ve been examining the question lately: What are holidays really? They are days that we set aside as special days to remember something great or important.
It seems to me that some days bear greater recognition than others and hence that not all holidays are equal. Following this train of thought I think to myself: Being a Christian is the most important thing in my life, so holidays that celebrate important Christian events hold the most importance for me. Of Christian holidays , the most important would be the those that celebrate the most significant to the Christian faith. The most pivotal event to the Christian faith is Christ’s death and resurrection, so celebrating this should be the most important to Christians, right? The time of year that Gentiles celebrate this is during Easter. I really am no fan of the name “Easter” (named after a pagan goddess named Ēostre) so as others before me have also done, I prefer to refer to the day I celebrate Christ’s resurrection as “Resurrection Day”.
So this past year, armed with my resolve to make Resurrection Day a special celebration, I began to look all through the stores for some festive decorations. I was quite surprised by the serious lack of anything Christian linked to the holiday with which to celebrate in my most frequented store, Walmart. So I made a special trip to the Christian bookstore and was shocked to find just one item. The Easter/Resurrection Day holiday had been taken over by bunnies and chicks! Okay, so that didn’t work out so well. I also realized that having celebrated Christmas a mere 3 months prior, that we were neither in the mood nor had the finances to have “another big holiday” so soon. I came to realize that if I was going to really try to make something special out of the Resurrection Day celebration, that Christmas was going to have to be scaled back. So only able to make a small effort out of Resurrection Day this past year, I have determined to change things the next time around.
Christmas is the celebration of the miraculous and the beginning of the promises and prophecies given, and Christ’s birth is a necessary precursor to Christ’s death, but should the celebration of Christ’s birth all but supplant and negate the celebration of His resurrection? Something just seems a bit out of place about that to me. So it is my resolve to find a smaller but still meaningful way to celebrate Christmas and to find a way to make Resurrection Day into more than just a day of chocolate baskets and egg hunts and closer to the celebration that it really should be.
