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The rest of the New Testament does not deviate from this pattern. The earliest recorded Christian sermon (in Acts 2) proclaims the Easter message of the world's Savior crucified and then raised by Israel's God. And what can we say of Paul, who nowhere speaks of Jesus' birth, but everywhere heralds "Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2) and warns that "if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain" (15:14)?

To this day, Christian worship is marked by Easter more than by Christmas. Consider the sacraments (or ordinances, if you prefer). Baptism is baptism into Christ's crucifixion and resurrection. As Paul writes, "We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (Rom. 6:4, NRSV). Celebrating the Eucharist, or Communion, includes rich themes drawing both from Christ's passion and his resurrection. And of course, we gather to worship on the day of the Lord's rising, so that Christians for centuries have thought of each Sunday as a "little Easter."

The recovery of Easter as our pivotal holy day may best be served by a recovery of the Christian calendar, complete with the cycle of seasons that recall the gospel from Advent to Christmas to Epiphany to Lent to Easter and Pentecost. The calendar, like the gospel narrative, builds toward and pivots around the focal events of Christ's passion and Easter. Recognizing the liturgical year is a large step toward seeing Easter as the main Christian holiday.

In calling Christians to return to the Christian calendar and return Easter to its rightful prominence, I am not implying that the events of Christmas are trivial or untrue. The nativity stories help us to remember key and glorious truths, such as the Incarnation. But surely Easter, and not the Christmas on which we modern Western Christians focus most of our attention, is the "fulcrum that balances Christian life."

Christmas celebrated without the events of Easter overshadowing is too easily sentimentalized and secularized. A baby in a manger, angels hovering overhead, cattle lowing nearby—surely this idyllic world needs no redemption. A dechristianized Christmas is the ultimate Pelagian holiday; for at what other time of the year can we seem so certain that, merely with good feelings and good will, humanity can save itself? Annually, in fact, newspaper editorials and television commentators say exactly that, pleading that all the world needs is to spread Christmas cheer through the year.

But Easter—Easter is on the other side of a cross with nails, of confrontation and beatings and death, and then, only then, resurrection and new life. Christmas we can too easily teach to our kids (and ourselves) without blinking, free of strain or discomfort (provided we gloss, as we usually do, such details as Herod's slaughter of the innocents). Easter is harder, for it requires facing death, the shortcomings of the disciples, the bloody lengths God must go to in order to rescue a confused, hateful world from itself.

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December (Web-only) 2007, Vol. 51