Why We Love Christmas More Than Easter

It’s November. The weather is getting cooler. Halloween havoc has ceased, women dust off their stylish boots and men their plaid. There’s something in the air. For some, that something in the air starts in October. Others, find it sacrilegious anytime before Thanksgiving Day. By mid-December, one thing is certain: Christmas is in the air. It’s celebrated by nearly every walk of life. It’s foundation is built around the birth of Christ beginning in the fourth century, first recorded in Rome in the year, 336. Yeah, He probably wasn’t born in December because what shepherd watches over his flocks at night where it snows? And yeah, so what if we bring a dead tree into our house, decorate it with breakables and wrap said tree and your house with lights? So what if we wait for an overweight elderly man to come sneak in our house through our chimney to deliver gifts he gets little elves to make for good boys and girls. Yeah, it has nothing to do with the birth of our Lord, but have you seen the Sleeping Beauty Castle during Christmas? We love Christmas.

But is with the obsession of Christmas? Sure, it’s the Super Bowl of capitalism, the crowning gift giving festival of the year, but it’s more than just gifts. We church goers love it too. My home church just finished an amazing, well rehearsed Christmas program featuring all of the kids in our Lighthouse children’s ministry. They were dressed in costume with acting lines and music numbers all on a beautifully decorated stage. I loved every moment of it.

For church goers, there are a key number of big Sunday’s every year and Christmas is at the top. I know, but there’s Easter! Cmon, Zak. Resurrection Sunday is most important time of the year. Think about it: Christmas isn’t just a day of the year. It has its own season! What little is left of the American culture, goes all in every year at Christmastime. Easter gets its day on the calendar, but is hard pressed to get as much attention as Christmas.

So why is this? Why does Christmas get so much attention? The answer is simple and no, I will not argue here that we shouldn’t be excited for Christmas. Christmas, at its core, is a festival celebrating the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, the Promised One. The Savior of the world had come just as prophets foretold it. Born of a virgin, into poverty, His first night on this Earth wasn’t in a castle or in a mansion on a hilltop. He was born in a cave and laid in an animal’s feeding trough. He was born in a world of chaos. You don’t think so? He’s the Son of the Most High and his hometown treated Him worse than Cleveland treated LeBron when he took his talents to South Beach. They had no room for him.

As anticlimactic as that sounds, Heaven rejoiced. Shepherds came to see what God had done. Philosophers from miles away traveled great distances and brought expensive and fine gifts only royalty deserved. Christmas is exciting because it was the day Jesus was born – and I can relate to that! All of us have been born, and each year we celebrate or perhaps groan of another year. Some of us, have been blessed with children of our own. How exciting was that day? All the pictures you took. The gifts you bought. The parties you had in anticipation of the baby’s arrival. The birth of your baby is easily one of the happiest, most exciting, most terrifying moments of your existence – and it should be. Christ being born and not just miraculously coming into existence as a grown man is relative to all of us. Birthdays are exciting. Baby’s are exciting. They bring peace and contentment. Christmas is so exciting because it’s incredibly relative.

Easter surrounds the resurrection of this same baby, but as a grown man some 3 decades later. The Cross has become a symbol for all of Christendom, but why? Jesus didn’t stay on the cross? After His death, he was removed from said cross, placed in a tomb, and three days later resurrected Himself. So why the cross? Why is that the symbol of Easter and all of Christianity? For same reason we love Christmas – we can relate. While we haven’t died ourselves, all of us knew someone who experienced death. In that experience, we felt a host of emotions. It is predestined that every person on this earth will at one point die. (Hebrews 9:27) So when someone has a death experience, we empathize with that because we ourselves have experienced death’s effects.

The Cross reminds us that He was just like me. The injustice that was given to Him being born among the animals causes me great remorse because I can compare that to my birth experience. I was born in a hospital surrounded by medical professionals. I was born in the same hospital as Tom Hanks! Jesus was born in the same hospital as a sheep. Oh, the irony that the Shepherd was born among the sheep. Christmas has a greater influence on me because I have something to compare it to. But raising oneself from the dead? I have no idea what that’s like. Leading captivity captive? (Ephesians 4:8) Being seated at the right hand of God? (Ephesians 1:20-28) We can’t even comprehend these acts of Christ. (Ecclesiastes 8:17) None of us have ever experienced a true resurrection from the dead…

At least not yet…

“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.”

‭‭1 Thessalonians‬ ‭4:14-18‬

I don’t what it’s like to see the dead rise. I don’t know what it’s like to even be dead. But my God promises me that death isn’t the end of my story. I have nothing to compare it to, but by faith I know He is able. Some day soon I will know exactly what Resurrection Sunday feels like because I worship the God who promised me I will rise!

I absolutely love Christmas. I love the spiritual side and pieces of the secular side of Christmas. The event of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth changed the world. He came to this earth in a way that even someone like me could’ve reached out and touched Him. Could you imagine that? Being a shepherd and Mary turning to you and asking, “you want to hold Him?” It gives me chills. That’s how accessible He was. And the more beautiful picture is that He is still that accessible today. Today, Jesus isn’t a baby laying in a feeding trough. Today, Jesus is an intercessor, He is my Savior and as easily as it was for me it’s just as easy for you.

Christmas is an amazing holiday loved by millions. It displayed our now easy access to our creator and that is worth celebrating. We all can’t compare ourselves to a mighty vengeful king robed in riches and glory, but we can relate to a family with no fame, we can be encouraged by their humility and forever changed by their faith. Christmas reminds me I serve a God who knows what I go through because He went through it too. What a day it will be though when all that Resurrection Day brought, all the power and glory that Easter showed the world, all that I put my faith in, will be made sight. Signing out for now. Talk to you again soon. Thanks for reading.

“”As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, And at the last He will take His stand on the earth. “Even after my skin is destroyed, Yet from my flesh I shall see God; Whom I myself shall behold, And whom my eyes will see and not another. My heart faints within me!”

‭‭Job‬ ‭19:25-27‬ ‭