Easter vs. Christmas

I touched on this briefly this past Sunday morning, but why is there such a difference in the emphasis between Christmas and Easter even among believers? So much goes into the Christmas celebration for almost two months leading up to Christmas Day, but yet even among believers sometimes the celebration is scaled down and there is definitely not as much time and intentionality put into it.

Dennis Rainey gives this as a possible explanation in Moments With You:

"It's not interesting to the secular community. While the entire culture is focused on gift-giving and food-filled festivities at Christmas, Easter doesn't fit as well into our society's love affair with materialism."

I am afraid even we as believers may be leaning more towards celebrating Christmas for those reasons as well. May it be that the reason we get so excited about Christmas is not so much because of our excitement and treasuring of Christ as it is the gifts, the family, and the food? Therefore the reason Easter is so scaled down in our celebration is because all of those peripheral things are not connected with it: food, family, and most especially gifts.

I pray that is not the case, but I fear it may be and if so I pray that our hearts will put what is central back at the center of both Christmas and Easter--Christ. I pray that our celebration of both would be such that both equally proclaim the Gospel and our treasuring of Christ to our community. What a witness it would be to the community around us to see a church that makes just as big a deal of Easter as Christmas, if not bigger?