Monday, March 24, 2008
Happy Crossmas! Why Easter stubbornly resists the commercialism that swallowed Christmas.
Unlike Christmas, whose deeper spiritual meaning has been all but buried under an annual avalanche of commercialism, Easter has retained a stubborn hold on its identity as a religious holiday. This is all the more surprising when you consider what an opportune time it would be for marketers to convince us to buy more stuff. Typically arriving around the beginning of spring, Easter would be the perfect time for department stores to euchre customers into buying carloads of kids' outdoor toys, warm-weather clothes, and summertime sporting equipment. And while Christmas is forced to contend with Thanksgiving, New Year's Day, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, there is little holiday competition around Easter time. (Passover and Easter, despite their proximity in the calendar, don't seem to interfere with each other much.) All in all, the church's most important feast day comes at a terrific time of year for Madison Avenue."
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