- Island priest believes Easter is more important than Christmas.
- Do you know the significance of Holy Week and the Easter weekend?
- Will you be going to church this Easter weekend? Take part in our poll.
On Good Friday, the JEP spoke to the Rev Canon Paul Brooks, who says Easter is more important than Christmas because it is the foundation of Christian belief.
HOW will you be spending today, Good Friday?
a: Taking advantage of the day off to go shopping?
b: Having a long lie-in before spending the day with family?
c: Same as any other, as you have to work?
d: Going to church?
It doesn’t take an educated guess to assume that most Islanders would tick a and b, and it is likely that more people will be at work than attending a church service.
Which is a shame, because Easter is the most important festival in the Christian calendar – much more significant than Christmas – as it celebrates Jesus’s Resurrection, three days after he was executed.
Yet the true meaning is increasingly being lost on a largely secular society.
The same could be said of Christmas, which is more a festival of consumerism and marketing techniques than the celebration of the birth of a baby in what is today the state of Israel – an event which led to a worldwide belief system.
The Rev Canon Paul Brooks will be at work and attending church today, as he is the minister at St Paul’s Church in New Street and a vice-Dean of Jersey. He says that although the Island’s churches respect the festival and it is still one of the main gatherings for congregations, it is losing significance in the wider community.
‘Compared to when we first came to Jersey, Good Friday is not valued in the islands,’ he said. ‘For the church, it is the most important time of the year, when it gives meaning to Christmas. Without Easter, Christmas is pointless. The point is that God has come into the world to identify with us, as human beings, and to actually participate in the suffering we as human beings endure.’
In a week when the Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, lamented the news that a third of children in the UK thought Easter marked the birth of the Easter bunny, just what should Easter be about? Easter is more important than Christmas because it is the foundation of Christian belief. Christianity came about not just because Jesus was born, but from his Resurrection, three days after he was executed.
Mr Brooks says the decline in Easter is because it is not seen as a ‘fun’ holiday. ‘Good Friday is not thought of as a sexy enough festival,’ he observed. ‘Basically, a man dying on a cross is not such a good picture as a baby in a stable.
‘Today it does not have the same emotional reaction as Christmas on a superficial level.’
It takes Christians a long time to prepare for the Easter festival, which is preceded by Lent. For six weeks from Ash Wednesday, Christians observe a devoted period of fasting, repentance, moderation and spiritual discipline to reflect on Jesus Christ’s suffering and his sacrifice, his life, death, burial and the Resurrection.
It culminates in Holy Week, the week preceding Easter.
Holy Week begins with Palm Sunday, which celebrates Jesus’s arrival in Jerusalem riding on a donkey, and ends with Holy Saturday. Then comes Easter Sunday, a day of joyful celebration that, through his death, burial, and Resurrection, Jesus paid the penalty for sin, thus purchasing for all who believe in him eternal life.
It may be trendy to knock religious beliefs and mock those who have a true faith, but 2,000 years on, Christianity is still going strong even if only a minority attend church.
While the majority of Islanders don’t attend services on a regular basis, it still has relevance when it comes to the milestones in life, like baptisms, weddings and funerals.
And if Easter is more of a long weekend spring break to many, rather than a religious festival, come Easter Sunday churches expect to see some of the highest attendances of the year.
However, compared to countries in Europe like Germany, Poland and France, and around the world where Easter is subject to strict
observance, it attracts less reverence in the British Isles.
‘I was talking to someone from Poland, where Easter is a special season, when friends come together and go to church and bring special foods,’ said Mr Brooks. ‘As for shops opening on Good Friday, that was happening even before Sunday trading, but now shops even open on Christmas Day at what is supposed to be a family day but it is no longer that.
‘Easter is a wonderful celebration in France, but not in Jersey or the UK as far as I am aware. It has become redundant.’
Society, he added, needs cycles such as the Island’s famous Jersey Royal potato season so eagerly awaited by locals and in the UK, and other traditional dates in the calendar
His spiritual hope for Good Friday is that across the Island, people will come together with family and friends to celebrate and remember what Jesus did for them by suffering and dying on the cross.
‘As a community founded in Christian values, if we lose sight of Christian festivals, we lose sight of where we ought to be as a community. If they become less important to society, they become sidelined. And that’s bad for us all.
‘If all the 365 days in the year are all the same, where are the festivals? Where do you celebrate life?’
