The two Christmas crossover comics led me to a conundrum: canonically speaking, Easter is supposed to be the “primary” Christian holiday. In popular culture it is definitely the other way around: there are dozens (if not hundreds) of Christmas-themed movies, not to mention all the corresponding holiday shorts that are so popular with various animation studios, but I’m having trouble coming up with even one good Easter movie.
Perhaps part of the reason is a practical factor that Arlo points out above: Christmas has a nice, reliable date, whereas Easter hops all around the early Spring calendar.
To expand on Kilby’s point, US schools are all off at the same time at Christmas. The equivalent in the spring is spring break, which isn’t aligned to Easter or Passover, and tends to be spread out over time (or, in the schools I attended, nonexistent).
Would things have been different if Charles Dickens had run short of money near Easter, instead of Christmas? If Clement Moore had penned “The Night Before Easter”? We’ll never know.
To Number 1: Ben Hur was arguably an “Easter movie” As was “the Passion of the Christ” (mostly).
To be honest as compelling as the Death and Resurrection of Jesus is and has been for “religion” it really doesn’t have the “Fun” factor of Christmas.
There’s “The Robe” (1953), in the same category as Ben Hur. It was the top grossing picture in the US for 9 weeks, and won the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Drama). Richard Burton got an Oscar nomination.
I watched that a couple of years ago. Let’s just say it doesn’t hold up well.
Just FYI, I love the little stuffed bunny in the top picture. I want one.
I couldn’t tell if it’s AI generated from the website EditorM posted.
Chak, sorry I don’t know anything more about that image. I just picked it out from a few search results, I don’t frequently use that site. But they ask to have attribution posted along with their free images, so we did.
Christmas has an adorable baby and cute animals and it’s an easy sell for marketers who want to inspire warm fuzzies and you can have similar warm fuzzies if only you buy our product. Doing the same thing with Easter has the problem that Easter is inescapably linked to a crucifixion, and it’s hard to make a crucifixion cute. It won’t work to try and make an adorable Roman centurion doll stabbing Jesus in the side, or a soft fluffy crown of thorns. (‘Parents! Now your kids can be like Jesus! Put on the crown of thorns and use the included dye to draw blood streaming down their little faces! Grandma will love it!’)
To a certain extent, it’s a relief that the really important holiday isn’t the one that’s the most commercially exploited. I’ve read some Jewish writers who say the same thing about Hanukkah: it’s not the biggest holiday, and it takes the commercial pressure off Passover.
The local school district had last week for spring break, so managed to work fine for that purpose. The schools I went to as a kid, including Jr. High and High School in this same district, did not have a spring break. I didn’t encounter that until college. I was talked into a trip my freshmen year there, but after than just took the week off.
Breaking Cat News had a fun strip today, with literal Easter eggs embedded:
It wasn’t easy to get them all added up to the target number, but I finally got the last one. Here are the totals by panel: First=2, Second=5, Third=2, Fourth=6, leaving 18 to find in the last panel. If you are having trouble, I’ll give you a hint: the most elusive egg is yellow.
Kilby (1): Thanks for the laugh, about Easter hopping around the calendar.
“The Ten Commandments” has been broadcast at Easter time for years. As far as Easter specials go, there were a few produced by the famed Rankin-Bass team, such as “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” and “The Easter Bunny Is Comin’ To Town”. TV programming seems to favor the rabbits over the Crucifixion.
In the early 1990s Will Vinton produced the “Claymation Easter” short airing on CBS.
Bits of the Claymation and Rankin-Bass specials are available on YouTube.
There was also “It’s The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown” special.
The Hallmark TV Channel has numerous holiday movies, including some with Easter-related themes, but I won’t say they’re necessarily “good”. They seem to churn out romantic films at an alarming rate.
I have a friend who was born on Christmas day. She tells me it is not much fun to have that particular day as your birthday.
Now if she had been born on Easter, it wouldn’t be a problem most years.
Some folks celebrate their half-birthday.
Mark in Boston – My sister (and we are Jewish) was born almost on Christmas Day – she was born on Dec 23. That was some years after I was born on Halloween. Birthday parties always either had red and green decoration for her birthday or black and orange for mine. (“Baby” sister, now in her 50s – how can that be – had an August birthday – we would go crazy - any color and theme was possible for her.)
It is DEFINITELY NOT fun to have a birthday on a holiday. Imagine getting all of your presents – birthday and Christmas/Chanukah – for the year at basically the same time. Or going Trick or Treating for the main fun event at one’s birthday party every year. No choice of decorations for the party – set by the holiday. The two of us had a lot of fun with the “baby’s” birthday parties.
NO matter how many times I tried – no one would actually move my birthday to April 30.
Well, Meryl, if your sister’s birthday were on Christmas, then you and your sister would have the same birthdays after conversion, because OCT 31 is the same as DEC 25…
(25 in DECimal (base 10) notation is two tens and five ones, whereas 31 in OCTal (base 8) notation is three eights and one one…)
And larK’s formula has been around for a long time nerd joke that Christmas and Halloween are the same! “And here’s a proof.”
For a Halloween birthday, HEX would be better.
Well it would have would work for my family and me as I might actually convince them to ignore mine.
Though this is something Robert hates – I don’t want (and get upset if he has for me) any gifts for me for my birthday (or anniversary or Christmas or Chanukah).
Comics I Don't Understand 
The two Christmas crossover comics led me to a conundrum: canonically speaking, Easter is supposed to be the “primary” Christian holiday. In popular culture it is definitely the other way around: there are dozens (if not hundreds) of Christmas-themed movies, not to mention all the corresponding holiday shorts that are so popular with various animation studios, but I’m having trouble coming up with even one good Easter movie.
Perhaps part of the reason is a practical factor that Arlo points out above: Christmas has a nice, reliable date, whereas Easter hops all around the early Spring calendar.
To expand on Kilby’s point, US schools are all off at the same time at Christmas. The equivalent in the spring is spring break, which isn’t aligned to Easter or Passover, and tends to be spread out over time (or, in the schools I attended, nonexistent).
Would things have been different if Charles Dickens had run short of money near Easter, instead of Christmas? If Clement Moore had penned “The Night Before Easter”? We’ll never know.
To Number 1: Ben Hur was arguably an “Easter movie” As was “the Passion of the Christ” (mostly).
To be honest as compelling as the Death and Resurrection of Jesus is and has been for “religion” it really doesn’t have the “Fun” factor of Christmas.
There’s “The Robe” (1953), in the same category as Ben Hur. It was the top grossing picture in the US for 9 weeks, and won the Golden Globe for Best Picture (Drama). Richard Burton got an Oscar nomination.
I watched that a couple of years ago. Let’s just say it doesn’t hold up well.
Just FYI, I love the little stuffed bunny in the top picture. I want one.
I couldn’t tell if it’s AI generated from the website EditorM posted.
Chak, sorry I don’t know anything more about that image. I just picked it out from a few search results, I don’t frequently use that site. But they ask to have attribution posted along with their free images, so we did.
Christmas has an adorable baby and cute animals and it’s an easy sell for marketers who want to inspire warm fuzzies and you can have similar warm fuzzies if only you buy our product. Doing the same thing with Easter has the problem that Easter is inescapably linked to a crucifixion, and it’s hard to make a crucifixion cute. It won’t work to try and make an adorable Roman centurion doll stabbing Jesus in the side, or a soft fluffy crown of thorns. (‘Parents! Now your kids can be like Jesus! Put on the crown of thorns and use the included dye to draw blood streaming down their little faces! Grandma will love it!’)
To a certain extent, it’s a relief that the really important holiday isn’t the one that’s the most commercially exploited. I’ve read some Jewish writers who say the same thing about Hanukkah: it’s not the biggest holiday, and it takes the commercial pressure off Passover.
The local school district had last week for spring break, so managed to work fine for that purpose. The schools I went to as a kid, including Jr. High and High School in this same district, did not have a spring break. I didn’t encounter that until college. I was talked into a trip my freshmen year there, but after than just took the week off.
Breaking Cat News had a fun strip today, with literal Easter eggs embedded:
It wasn’t easy to get them all added up to the target number, but I finally got the last one. Here are the totals by panel: First=2, Second=5, Third=2, Fourth=6, leaving 18 to find in the last panel. If you are having trouble, I’ll give you a hint: the most elusive egg is yellow.
Kilby (1): Thanks for the laugh, about Easter hopping around the calendar.
“The Ten Commandments” has been broadcast at Easter time for years. As far as Easter specials go, there were a few produced by the famed Rankin-Bass team, such as “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” and “The Easter Bunny Is Comin’ To Town”. TV programming seems to favor the rabbits over the Crucifixion.
In the early 1990s Will Vinton produced the “Claymation Easter” short airing on CBS.
Bits of the Claymation and Rankin-Bass specials are available on YouTube.
There was also “It’s The Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown” special.
The Hallmark TV Channel has numerous holiday movies, including some with Easter-related themes, but I won’t say they’re necessarily “good”. They seem to churn out romantic films at an alarming rate.
I have a friend who was born on Christmas day. She tells me it is not much fun to have that particular day as your birthday.
Now if she had been born on Easter, it wouldn’t be a problem most years.
Some folks celebrate their half-birthday.
Mark in Boston – My sister (and we are Jewish) was born almost on Christmas Day – she was born on Dec 23. That was some years after I was born on Halloween. Birthday parties always either had red and green decoration for her birthday or black and orange for mine. (“Baby” sister, now in her 50s – how can that be – had an August birthday – we would go crazy - any color and theme was possible for her.)
It is DEFINITELY NOT fun to have a birthday on a holiday. Imagine getting all of your presents – birthday and Christmas/Chanukah – for the year at basically the same time. Or going Trick or Treating for the main fun event at one’s birthday party every year. No choice of decorations for the party – set by the holiday. The two of us had a lot of fun with the “baby’s” birthday parties.
NO matter how many times I tried – no one would actually move my birthday to April 30.
George Rock, with Spike Jones’ band, had a great song called “My Birthday Comes On Christmas“.
Well, Meryl, if your sister’s birthday were on Christmas, then you and your sister would have the same birthdays after conversion, because OCT 31 is the same as DEC 25…
(25 in DECimal (base 10) notation is two tens and five ones, whereas 31 in OCTal (base 8) notation is three eights and one one…)
And larK’s formula has been around for a long time nerd joke that Christmas and Halloween are the same! “And here’s a proof.”
For a Halloween birthday, HEX would be better.
Well it would have would work for my family and me as I might actually convince them to ignore mine.
Though this is something Robert hates – I don’t want (and get upset if he has for me) any gifts for me for my birthday (or anniversary or Christmas or Chanukah).