It’s a surprise to no one that material gain is a powerful motivator for everyone under the sun. Just look at modern advertising: get this fancy new thing, let us motivate you to part with only $19.99! Look at all the giveaways, the raffles, the TikTokers who go around offering people $100 just to call their boyfriend and pretend to break up. But no time illustrates the materialistic expectations of man more than Christmas time. The most wonderful time of the year is filled with tiny tots, with their eyes all aglow of course, either sending their lists to the North Pole or asking Grandma to buy them a pricey toy they’ll stop playing with in two weeks. Maybe it is even better illustrated in the crowds of adults all practically kickboxing with each other to earn a couple hundred dollars off of a TV on Black Friday, the best day to snag a deal on whatever gift you’re going to give someone come December 25th. Perhaps it is illustrated best by the family who goes to church on Christmas eve or Christmas morning to fulfill their religious obligations to God, but completely ignores Him at all times after that, being too caught up in the shiny red packages and delicious looking ham to even acknowledge the ultimate Giver of gifts.
But perhaps there is one more illustration we could look at today. A tale of two holidays, one the most popular holiday in Western culture, the other perhaps secondarily so. Today, let us test the claims of those who say Christmas is genuinely about giving and loving by contrasting two holidays which are essentially the same in purpose and practice, with there being one major difference: no one gives gifts on Easter.
I believe the most fair comparison we can make between two holidays would be Christmas and Easter, as opposed to Christmas and Thanksgiving or Christmas and the Fourth of July or what have you. The thing is, Christmas is a religious holiday regardless of what the woke may say. Thanksgiving is seen as a religious holiday by Christians who wish to thank God for his blessings, but in actuality it was established by the government and was originally celebrated by the Pilgrims. It has no direct roots in the Bible, and while God’s Word certainly would endorse a holiday meant to praise the Lord, there was no Biblical event that spurred Thanksgiving into existence, whereas there was with Christmas and Easter. Besides, Thanksgiving as a holiday only implies thankfulness, it doesn’t imply thankfulness to the Christian God. Christmas literally has the word Christ in it, so it’s hard to say Christmas isn’t a Christian holiday.
Therefore, Thanksgiving is out. So is the Fourth of July. I don’t think I should need to explain why, but suffice it to say the Fourth of July is a holiday celebrating America, not God.
Thus, Easter is the most comparable holiday to Christmas. It combines the religious aspect of Jesus’s resurrection from the dead with the family gathering aspect we find at Christmas and Thanksgiving time, it has cultural folklore with characters such as the Easter bunny, just as Christmas has Santa, and it is also a widely celebrated holiday. Easter is viewed by most Americans as a Christian holiday, as it should be, and if you’re not at least nominally Christian I’m not sure why you would celebrate it.
According to Gallup, 93% of Americans planned to celebrate Christmas in 2019. That’s a huge number for a nation like America, where diverse religions and viewpoints exist in abundance. The fact that 93% of Americans agree that Christmas should be celebrated is both encouraging and interesting, as it shows a peaked interest in something about Christmas. Concerning Easter, roughly 80% of Americans celebrate it every year, according to Statista. 80% is still a very high percentage, but it’s notably lower than Christmas. So why, if both Easter and Christmas are both religious holidays that promote family gatherings and funny folklore, do 13% more Americans celebrate Christmas than celebrate Easter? What are the distinctions between Easter and Christmas, and why is it important to note them? By making a few contrasts, can we understand why exactly Easter is less popular than Christmas?
Perhaps it is because Christmas is in winter, therefore everything is more miserable and we need a holiday to cheer us up. That’d be a fair point to make, and it’s probably true. I find the advent season somewhere between fatiguing and relaxing most years, but it’s certainly better than sitting around with nothing to do and nothing to celebrate. Or perhaps it’s because we have classic songs and movies about Christmas that give us a feeling of warmth and happiness. But then again, why don’t we have a number of songs and movies about Easter? There are a few, sure, but I never hear of a radio station devoting their programming to Easter for a month, like so many do around Christmas.
But nay, my friends, I do not believe any of these reasons to be the main reason why Christmas is more popular than Easter. It really all comes down to one thing: Gifts. It’s no surprise to anyone that everyone loves a shiny surprise at Christmas. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, I do not feel that Easter needs to be as popular as Christmas. I personally prefer Christmas, whether because I genuinely feel it is the better holiday or if it is just what culture has drilled into me I do not know. But just look around at all the deals, the sales, the lights, the shiny trinkets, and it will become apparent that everyone loves Christmas so much because they love self gain so much. Even folks who say they love giving gifts love, in actuality, the feeling they get from giving gifts. Which is fine, the Lord never said not to be joyful because someone else is happy with something you did, he simply warned against pride.
In the end, Christmas and Easter are both Christian holidays that have excellent reasons to be celebrated, and although literally every Christian I know says this, both Christmas and Easter are centered on Jesus, and as long as that is remembered, it is of little consequence which is more popular.
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