Christmas celebrates the beginning of his life on earth through his miraculous birth to a virgin girl, Mary in a small town in Israel named Bethlehem. In the church we call this the Incarnation - the time when God the Son came to earth and became a human being like us. During that Christmas we sing songs about mangers and wise men from afar, and we tell joyous stories and perform dramas that bring to life the wonder of the birth of the saviour.
The Easter season which we celebrate this week has a different theme. It is a time when we remember the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on the cross. If it were only the remembrance of the death of a man who had lived a good life and had been a good teacher, but had gone a step too far in his teaching and had ended up paying for his mistakes with his life, there would be no joy in our Easter celebrations. What kind of person finds joy in the death of another, especially someone as good as Jesus? However, the joy of Easter, and the reason the church celebrates it with such great anticipation and happiness, is the purpose behind Christ's death and the fact that after he died on the cross, he did not stay in the tomb. At Easter, we not only mourn the death of Christ, but we celebrate his resurrection from the dead.
