An Ode to Easter

Why Easter means more to Christian theology than Christmas

The year 2025 offers a religious triple conjunction. Western Easter and Orthodox Easter fall on the same day, April 20, while Easter is the final day of Passover.

Christmas gets the attention. Easter matters more to theology.

Photo by Pedro Vit on Unsplash

About a generation after the death of Jesus, Paul wrote to a church at Corinth, a city in Greece, “If Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain.”

That Paul meets this question head on, rather than dance around the issue, is a sign of honesty. His sentence is among the most powerful in monotheism – as well as the key to why Easter is more important than Christmas.

The verse is from the 15th chapter of First Corinthians, a chapter worth reading in full – won’t take you long – on Easter Sunday.

To locate me on the faith spectrum: I am a Christian agnostic. That’s a real thing.

Christmas is a wonderful holiday for children, otherwise too commercialized and too focused on materialism.

Christmas being both religious and secular sometimes gets lost. You don’t need to be Christian to have gifts under a tree and celebrate the nonspiritual aspects of the day.

Those who want Christmas lights and Santas out of public schools and courthouses may seem confused regarding this. There are no toy-making elves in the Bible! In any event the much-exaggerated “war on Christmas” each season ends with unconditional surrender of the attacking forces.

There are two Christmas accounts in the Gospels, in Matthew and Luke. Matthew offers the adoration of the magi (learned astronomers); in Luke, the arrival of Jesus is announced not to kings or princes of the assembly but to “shepherds living in the field,” too poor to hire guards to watch their flock.

That outsiders (the magi are “from the east”) and laborers without means or influence are chosen to receive the celestial child into history is one of the aspects that make the Christmas story feel real.