No, we don’t make a huge deal about it, though most of the wards I"ve been in do a special program on both Easter and Christmas involving special musical numbers, and the talks are better prepared…our celebrations for both events are ‘home and family’ centered, as are, in reality, most of our celebrations.
If we celebrate at home, with family traditions and emphasis rather than at grand church performances, that’s not ignoring the matter, y’know. It’s simply bringing it home. As a matter of fact, our emphasis on Jesus’ life is His atonement as culminated in His resurrection. The fact that we have General Conference right around the time we believe both His birth AND His resurrection happened is not a "pre-emption’ of the celebration. General Conference is a very big thing to us, y’know.
Replying to myself here…
This conversation has struck me rather profoundly. In fact, it has pointed out a difference between Mormons and many other Christian belief systems that I hadn’t really considered before. Y’all are right. We do NOT make a big religious production out of Christmas and Easter in the church. (though having been a ward choir director for many years, and remembering the work I had to put in to prepare the program for those events, I feel like protesting a bit…) I’ve seen some of the incredible efforts and pageantry done by other churches, and you are right. We don’t do that.
I got to thinking about why, and it hit me; we don’t do it because we don’t need to. Our entire lives are based around our relationship to Christ: We don’t have to make a big deal out of Easter, because His atonement is part of our lives every day, and in every meeting we have. For those of you who dismiss General Conference as a somehow ‘lesser’ or ‘substitute’ for Easter, shame on you.
There aren’t many choirs as impressive as the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, y’know, and General Conference has them and other extremely impressive musicians, and ‘conference talks’ by prophets and apostles. I personally would call that celebration fit for any occasion you can imagine, majestic and important enough for anybody at all.
As for how we celebrate…remember; we are a family oriented religion. Our religious centers are NOT our chapels, but our homes. If a couple wishes to marry, and cannot do so in the Temple, the advice is that the next most holy place is the home; not the church. If a young couple marries in the chapel rather than in the living room, it’s only because the living room won’t hold everybody.
For us, celebrating Easter at home with prayers, with lessons, with the stories, with tradition and family dinners IS celebrating it with all the sincerety, pomp and holiness that God or His Son could ask for, because we are remembering that for which He died and was resurrected: not pageantry, not gold or silver embroidery, or carilons ringing or shouted halelujahs, but rather for our souls, our families and our selves.
To note just how holy we believe this to be, I’ll remind you of something already said here; if Christmas does not fall on a Sunday, we have no church services, but we all remain at home and celebrate.
And the Temples close, because we are very aware of where true celebration of these events should truly take place.
Do not assume that because we do not celebrate Christmas and Easter in quite the extravagent way you do that we do not celebrate Christmas and Easter, or that we do not understand fully the import of both events.
