Pre-Easter Thoughts

Easter was always a big deal in my family, but not so big for the other LDS families I grew up with. I think it's my mom's influence. Every Easter Sunday started with an Armenian breakfast of basterma, chorag, the most amazing string cheese in the world and egg fights. Mom always dominated the egg fights. (Please note: This is not a violent breakfast ritual - it's just the best way to break and peel a hardboiled egg before you eat it!)

But as I've grown older, Easter became less about the food and more about the Man who gave His life on the cross and rose again, overcoming death, hell, and every other pain, temptation and affliction we will face in this world. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland described the loneliness of that sacrifice perfectly in his April 2009 General Conference talk. Elder Joseph B. Wirthlin fervently testified that because the Savior gave His life on the darkest Friday in the history of the world, the entire world gained an opportunity for eternal life on the brightest and most blessed first Easter Sunday.

How I feel about Easter is best summarized by the late, and great, President Gordon B. Hinckley: "There would have been no Christmas if there had not been an Easter." If not for the suffering in Gethsamane, the scouring and shame in Pilate's court, and the agony on Calvary's cross, Jesus Christ would have been just another man who lived and died in Judea. It is not His miraculous birth, but the much more miraculous events of His death and resurrection, that give Him the power to save. And so, as much as I love celebrating Christmas, I will always treat Easter as the more sacred holiday.

(Print by Greg Olsen)

PS - I'm making a turkey for Easter dinner tomorrow, complete with my mom's phenomenal stuffing and side dishes. Trying to follow in the great Rebecca Samme Bellino Cloward's footsteps is a daunting task, but I might as well learn now!