03.17.2023 – An Early Case of the Easter Blues


Easter Sunday is still a little more than three weeks away, but I’m already suffering from the Easter blues.

The church calendar requires us to go through some odd computations in order to get to the date of Easter – first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, but remember we’re talking about the Paschal full moon and the ecclesiastical equinox which occasionally are out of sync with their astronomical counterparts.  Anyway, check your calendar and it should show April 9 as Easter Sunday, 2023.

It is not the calendar calculations that have me feeling blue, however. Nor is it our secular culture’s tendency to reduce the day to a celebration of bunnies, chocolate, and daffodils. I don’t think it is the tendency for some to make Easter some sort of “we all get to start over” day, either. I think I’m feeling kind of sad about how the church, or at least some of the church, celebrates the day (or the weekend in the case of those churches running three-day Easter Eggstravaganzas). It’s as if Jesus’ resurrection isn’t quite enough.

I get lots of church-related advertisements on my social media feed. It’s not hard to figure out how the algorithms target me for the ads. My google searches and the click bait I take make me an obvious mark. I’ve got to say, though, if I were media manager at a megachurch in Phoenix, Arizona, I would wonder why I was paying to have someone in Auburn, Indiana, see my ads.  Repeatedly.

Anyway, it seems as if churches with media managers and online advertising budgets are all in on Eggstravaganzas the first weekend after the first full moon after the vernal equinox, ecclesiastically speaking. Some avoid the word Easter all together, hosting a Springtime Eggstravaganza, or maybe just an Eggstravaganza, no modifier needed. Yes, I know, the word “easter” has its pagan origins (probably related to “spring”), but it also has an increasingly tenuous connection with the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we might do well to remember. Big church eggstravaganzas seem to be more connected to bounce houses, food trucks, and contemporary Christian music concerts before, after, or during “worship” than to worshiping the Risen Christ.

So, if not with bounce houses, food trucks, and CCM concerts, how should the church and her people celebrate Easter? How should they mark the Day of Resurrection? Some of our Puritan forebears thought not at all. Every Lord’s Day was to celebrate the resurrection.  Other traditions have vigils and sunrise services. Many churches that forego bounce houses as a way to celebrate the triumph of life over death fill their sanctuaries and worship spaces with Easter lilies and tulips. Some hire some trumpet and trombone players to accompany the singing of the great Easter hymns. And, yes, some others have an Easter egg hunt in the church yard after worship.

What’s given me an early case of the Easter blues are the churches with Easter Eggstravaganzas and their bounce houses, food trucks, and CCM concerts all weekend long.

You’d think the resurrection of Christ from death to life eternal might be cause enough to get together and celebrate. Apparently not.

Of course, the cultural Easter with its bunnies, chocolate, and daffodils has been around for a long time.This year marks the 90th anniversary of Irving Belin’s “Easter Parade,” so we can assume the tradition of a bonnet with frills upon it is at least as old. Here’s Bing Crosby’s version of the song from “Holiday Inn” 81 years ago.

It’s not the cultural Easter that has me in a funk. It’s the eggstravaganza church. It might be too late for this year, but maybe the VFW or the Rotary club could host the eggstravaganza and the churches could concentrate on telling the story of that first morn and singing the praise of the risen, conquering son. Just a thought.