For the Easter weekend, the online magazine Slate reprinted a thoughtful, two year-old reflection by James Martin on the reason why Easter is not the commercial extravaganza that Christmas is. Despite Easter being celebrated at a propitious time of year for advertising and shopping (the beginning of spring), its religious meaning has not been overwhelmed by secular commercialization. The reason, Martin astutely points out, is found in the very events that Easter recalls for believers and non-believers alike:
“The Easter story is relentlessly disconcerting and, in a way, is the antithesis of the Christmas story. No matter how much you try to water down its particulars, Easter retains some of the shock it had for those who first participated in the events during the first century.
“…The resurrection, the joyful end of the Easter story, resists domestication as it resists banalization. Unlike Christmas, it also resists a noncommittal response. Even agnostics and atheists who don't accept Christ's divinity can accept the general outlines of the Christmas story with little danger to their worldview. But Easter demands a response.
“Easter is an event that demands a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ There is no ‘whatever.’”