Christmas or Easter: Which is your favourite and why?

[Aelred_Minor]

Christmas is a secular holiday. I hate it.

The pressure to give expensive gifts which no one really needs, spending money that people really don’t have, the plastic trees and wires, and this year’s version of Silent Night sang by the promiscuous country music star who’s every other song is about drinking beer and having pre-marital sex in the back of a pickup truck… Not to mention the sacrilegious bastardization of a Catholic Saint by Coca-Cola.

I hate it and would be happy if it stopped altogether and became the Feast of the Nativity of the Lord as it should be.

The Easter Vigil and the Midnight Christmas Mass are the high points of my year.

-Tim-

The word “Christmas” has too rich a cultural history to get rid of it, in my opinion. In itself it is beautiful that this Christian feast has ingrained itself into Western culture and produced its own very human traditions. It is the closest thing we have to a feast of the Incarnation after all. It should be a very incarnational celebration, at once a holiday and a holy day.

But I agree its crass modern interpretation is often disgusting. Regarding the commercialization of St. Nicholas, I like to remind myself of the saint’s traditional identity as the patron saint of sailors, by which he became a favorite of the very sea-going Dutch from whom we ultimately get Santa Claus (through the amused eyes of Anglo-American authors like Washinton Irving and Clement Clarke Moore). Sailing often had to do with commerce, so he would make a good patron saint of commercial enterprise. Perhaps we should pray to him for the re-evangelization of our overly commercial modern culture.

 

[ServantPD]

Easter, any day. I just feel that you can really feel a shift in the state of mind in people when you reach the end of the Easter Vigil. And I lived it much more intensely than Christmas, less focused on family meetings, presents for everyone or whatever but just focus on Christ that was coming out of the tomb.

Now, it has only been a year since I came back to the Church, and that may be a factor. While I wasn’t able to go to Christmas’s Midnight Mass because my family was togheter, I did manage to go to Easter Vigil later on, and interesting tasks were given to me as an acolyte, that really symbolized something for me personally, as I was having this celebration for the first time. Not only did I light up the candles during the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, but I actually went center stage in front of the presbyterium and announced Jesus’ resurrection to the assembley.

It may be normal tasks for any regular acolyte, but for a recent convert it’s completley different; while some are preparing themselves to cross the Tiber, I light up the candles of the altar of sacrifice and do a profession of faith in front of everyone. That was personally powerful, and was a meaningful moment for me as it was for them! And that may be a reason why I prefer Easter.

 

[chero23]

Both are special, it is hard to choose which is best. With Christmas comes the birth of our Lord, the holidays, the celebration to the Virgin Mother.

On the other hand Easter teaches us what our Lord suffered for us, but at the end he beat death by resurrecting.

 

[Megan7]

I voted for Easter, but that only applies to my own rite. In the Roman rite, I prefer the Christmas Mass, but I love celebrating Great Compline on Christmas Eve in the Byzantine Rite.

I love the Easter Vigil Mass of the Roman Rite, but after Easter Sunday, the celebration seems to fade away pretty quickly. The hymns chosen usually have an Easter theme, but after a few weeks, the awareness that we are in the midst of such an important season fades.

In the Byzantine Rite, Easter comes as a joyous celebration and stays that way for a full 50 days. Regular prayers and hymns are replaced with special prayers only sung during Pascha season. We joyfully sing the troparion of the Resurrection: Christ is risen from the dead. By death he trampled death and to those in the tombs he granted life. It is repeated many times throughout the liturgy for the full 50 days of the season, as if we just can’t get enough of proclaiming it. My favorite prayer in the Byzantine liturgy is also sung during this time and only at this time: The Angel exclaimed to her, full of grace: “Rejoice, O pure virgin, again, I say ‘Rejoice!’ Your son is risen from the grave on the third day and has raised the deal Let all nations rejoice.” Shine in splendor, O new Jerusalem; for the glory fo the Lord is risen upon you, O Zion. Sing with joy and rejoice. And you, pure Theotokos, rejoice in the resurrection of your son. At the end of the liturgy, the priest comes to the center of the church and holds up the crucifix three times, each time proclaiming in a strong voice, “Christ is Risen” and the people answer back “Indeed he is Risen”. I always feel a little sadness each time that Pascha season is gone, and I anticipate it much more than I do Christmas.

Very nice. Thank you.

 

[confusedgirl]

Wow this is fantastic! Its good to see that both are loved just as much. Advent is a great time of year. Winter is my favourite season and a beautiful winter scene. Throw in a Christmas Eve mass and you have a beautiful and mysterious time of year. But 40 days of Lent and you get to Palm Sunday and eventually Holy Week and your very faith is all told to you. You’re happy that Jesus died and rose again so that we may have life too. And without Easter we wouldn’t have the Eucharist and Jesus wouldn’t have fulfilled his duty on earth. And I noticed people said that without Christmas then there is no Jesus which is also true. I know that for some its hard to pick just one but if I put a both option then everyone would have picked that one or almost.

 

[grasscutter]

Advent.

 

[jediliz]

Christmas…

I don’t like incense used on Holy Thursday and earlier this year I was starting to get a cold and I can NOT breathe when they use incense (no, I don’t have asthma).

Plus, I love singing O Come O Come Emmanuel during Advent…especially when we have the organ playing very slowly.

 

[fred_conty]

Christmas is too busy with wrappings, gifts, cards, candy, …shopping…, santa songs, …decorating…, and all sorts of nonsense, and is all forgotten the day after. Umbug!

Easter is about what life is all about and is so moving. It too is about family but without all the wrong nonsense.

If you have children at home, it makes a big difference too. Being an empty nester definitely lessens Christmas. I would definitely like Christmas much more if it had holiness about it and not so much a bombardment of the other. But the world won’t let you escape the downside because it means another nickel in their pocket. And this just destroys the meaning without mercy. There is no way to keep a decent recollection except stay home.

There is also all the fighting going on about putting the crib on public property and saying prayers and having Christ scenes in the schools. The newspaper is filled with blah blah blah about this. Now you have to be carefull to say “happy holidays” instead of “merry Christmas” and all the other mental teardown that goes along with it like eliminating “O little Town of Bethlehem” or other christian songs.

Besides after Christmas, bills and the whole long winter ahead.
After Easter, new beautiful spring flowers and relief from the darkness of winter.

Your uncle Scrooge.

 

[grasscutter]

Christmas…

I don’t like incense used on Holy Thursday and earlier this year I was starting to get a cold and I can NOT breathe when they use incense (no, I don’t have asthma).

Plus, I love singing O Come O Come Emmanuel during Advent…especially when we have the organ playing very slowly.

Thank you so much for your post! That is one of favourite hymns! I look forward to it every Advent season.

 

[Gordon_Sims]

From a spiritual/religious point of view, Easter is my favorite. I’ve taken off all of Holy Week the last few years so I can spend time with my family and make it to all the Holy Week Masses, Stations of the Cross and Confession. We watch The Ten Commandments and some movie version of the Passion, and spend a lot of time praying and talking about our faith.

Overall, though, Christmas is my favorite. It’s the most wonderful time of the year! We listen to Christmas music from November 1st until the kids go back to school. We start watching Christmas movies Thanksgiving Day. We talk a lot about Jesus’ birth and we focus far more on quality, family time than on the secular & commercial trappings. On top of that, people in general tend to be nicer that time of year, whether it’s at Mass, at work, at the grocery store or just walking around town. It may be brief, but it gives you a little respite from the ugliness that tends to coat everything the rest of the year.

 

[Brigid34]

I put Christmas. It’s magical and it even has a number of carols (I’ve loved singing all my life). Most people are nicer around then - even those without religious beliefs. And I really like all the household preparation that goes into Christmas. Must be my German and Swedish background.

 

[Elizium23]

There is no choice for “Both”

I love both for different reasons. Easter is liturgically majestic and awesome. The weeks of Lent when we prepare are more intense than Advent, which is marred by secular joy and merrymaking as if Christmas has already begun. The cycle of liturgy and readings leading up to Holy Week just build, and build. When Passion Sunday hits you really know we’re in the midst of it. Then the Church comes alive culminating with Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter. Working and volunteering in my parish as I do, it is the busiest and most exuberant time of the year. I work especially hard on the music that I sing, there is a lot of material. Last year we were caught unawares by our director quitting and we had, ah, an a cappella Passion Sunday, and an interesting Holy Week. Easter lacks the family togetherness and the secular excitement of Christmas.

For Christmas you feel it in the season. It gets cold and the Salvation Army bells begin ringing. Everyone goes crazy after Thanksgiving even though the Church is still in violet Advent mode. We are all making plans and buying gifts. It is not as liturgically intense as Easter, the seasons and cycles are noticeably shorter. But we all come together for parties and exchanging presents and I feel the warm family spirit… most of my family is not so religious but they do enjoy their holiday!

Easter is the most important to Christians because it is a symbol of the resurrection and ultimate redemption of mankind. However, Christmas is especially meaningful to the Culture of Life because it celebrates the incarnation, the living Word who came among us, the mother who chose life for herself and the world. We would not be the same without both of them together.