{"id":45026,"date":"2017-11-25T12:46:10","date_gmt":"2017-11-25T19:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=45026"},"modified":"2017-11-25T12:46:10","modified_gmt":"2017-11-25T19:46:10","slug":"important-christmas-easter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2017\/11\/important-christmas-easter.html","title":{"rendered":"Which is more important? Christmas? Or Easter?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Star over Bethlehem, from the Christmas 1898 cover of Harper\u2019s Magazine<\/em>
(Wikimedia Commons public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a column that I wrote for the Deseret News<\/em> back in December 2010:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

I often wonder which of the two holidays, Christmas or Easter, is the most theologically significant.\u00a0 Occasionally, I\u2019m repelled not only by the commercialism of modern Christmas but by its sentimentality. \u00a0It\u2019s too easy, sometimes, to gush about the \u201cbabe of Bethlehem.\u201d\u00a0 Babies are cute.\u00a0 They\u2019re funny.\u00a0 They\u2019re unthreatening.\u00a0 And, although they certainly make demands upon their parents (often in the middle of the night), they don\u2019t require our total obedience.\u00a0 Anyway, billions of babies have been born.\u00a0 Scores of millions are born every year.\u00a0 Roughly four are born every second, worldwide.\u00a0 The birth of a baby may well be a miracle, in a sense, but it\u2019s an extremely common one.\u00a0 Nonbelievers and non-Christians can, and often do, enthusiastically celebrate Christmas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Easter remains the more religiously serious holiday.\u00a0 Perhaps that\u2019s why, Easter eggs and Easter chocolate and Easter dresses notwithstanding, it\u2019s been more difficult to commercialize.\u00a0 \u00a0And it\u2019s harder for nonbelievers to join in the festivities. To celebrate the birth of a baby is one thing; to celebrate the resurrection of an executed man is quite another.\u00a0 If it weren\u2019t for Easter, if it weren\u2019t for belief in the atonement and resurrection of Christ, there would be no particular reason to celebrate Christmas.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the central claim of Christmas isn\u2019t merely that a baby was born.\u00a0 It\u2019s that this particular newborn was, in fact, the perfect Son of God, the creator of the universe, our Lord and Savior.\u00a0 From this perspective, Christmas is the more fundamental holiday:\u00a0 No Christmas, no Easter.<\/span><\/p>\n

I probably can\u2019t resolve the question.\u00a0 And there is, perhaps, no need to resolve it.\u00a0 Both holidays commemorate essential parts of the divine plan for our salvation.\u00a0 But this much is indisputably true:\u00a0 That God took upon himself our weaknesses, our flesh\u2014and, ultimately, our sins\u2014is the central proposition that separates almost all forms of Christianity from all other religions.\u00a0 They\u2019re close cousins to the Christian faith, but neither Judaism nor Islam represents God as coming down to earth, \u201csuffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind . . . \u00a0that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities\u201d (Alma 7:11-12).\u00a0 Neither teaches of a God who \u201cdescended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth\u201d (Doctrine and Covenants 88:6).<\/span><\/p>\n

Even within Christianity, many thinkers have been powerfully tempted to replace the vulnerable, caring, even suffering deity of scripture with the \u201cunmoved mover\u201d of Aristotle, a God who lacks body, parts, and \u201cpassions\u201d (or emotions).\u00a0 Ordinary Bible-reading Christians have always known better than some theologians, though. \u00a0They don\u2019t pray to an immoveable stone. \u00a0John 11:35 (\u201cJesus wept\u201d) is not only the shortest verse in the Bible, but one of the most important; an \u201cunmoved\u201d God, \u201cimpassible,\u201d lacking emotions, is not the God of scripture. \u201cFor God so loved the world,\u201d says John 3:16, \u201cthat he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Still, the most important question remains:\u00a0 The story is beautiful, but is it true?\u00a0 Three stanzas from John Betjeman, the late British poet laureate, pose that question eloquently:<\/span><\/p>\n

And is it true,<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

This most tremendous tale of all,<\/span><\/strong>
\nSeen in a stained-glass window\u2019s hue,<\/span><\/strong>
\nA Baby in an ox\u2019s stall?<\/span><\/strong>
\nThe Maker of the stars and sea<\/span><\/strong>
\nBecome a Child on earth for me?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

And is it true? For if it is,<\/span><\/strong>
\nNo loving fingers tying strings<\/span><\/strong>
\nAround those tissued fripperies,<\/span><\/strong>
\nThe sweet and silly Christmas things,<\/span><\/strong>
\nBath salts and inexpensive scent<\/span><\/strong>
\nAnd hideous tie so kindly meant,<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

No love that in a family dwells,<\/span><\/strong>
\nNo carolling in frosty air,<\/span><\/strong>
\nNor all the steeple-shaking bells<\/span><\/strong>
\nCan with this single Truth compare\u2014<\/span><\/strong>
\nThat God was man in Palestine<\/span><\/strong>
\nAnd lives today in Bread and Wine.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The most important message brought by the Prophet Joseph Smith, supported by modern witnesses as well as ancient manuscripts, is that the Christmas story is, indeed, true.\u00a0 \u201cI am the Lord of Glory,\u201d the resurrected Savior told Joseph in the grove in the spring of 1820. \u201cI was crucified for the world that all those who believe on my name may have eternal life.\u201d\u00a0 We celebrate his first advent in ancient Bethlehem.\u00a0 He has returned since, and he will come again.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Here\u2019s a column that I wrote for the Deseret News back in December 2010: \u00a0 I often wonder which of the two holidays, Christmas or Easter, is the most theologically significant.\u00a0 Occasionally, I\u2019m repelled not only by the commercialism of modern Christmas but by its sentimentality. \u00a0It\u2019s too easy, sometimes, to gush about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhich is more important? Christmas? 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