Easter—not Christmas—should be the most important Christian holiday

Easter eggs are a symbol of Christ breaking out of the shell of His tomb into the new life which He means every Christian to share. But who ever thinks of that? For most people, Easter is little more than the day when it is customary to display new spring wardrobes, and when the Christian who has been vaguely troubled all during Lent about not doing any penance can set his mind at rest until next Ash Wednesday.

Yet there was a time when Easter was the greatest day in the year. That was when the Resurrection was, in practice as well as in theory, the central Christian reality. Modern scholarship shows more and more clearly that the collection of writings which contain the essence of Christianity in its purest and richest form, the books of the New Testament, were all composed under the impact of the Resurrection. christian christmas gif