(by Dan Peterson sic et non blog)
I’m very pleased to see the idea of “Holy Week” catching on in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It isn’t an “ordinance” of the Gospel — any more, strictly speaking, than the observance of Christmas or of Easter itself is — but, like Christmas and Easter, it provides a good opportunity to remember and to talk about Christ.
Why have Latter-day Saints, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, not historically celebrated “Holy Week”?
For one thing, Easter simply hasn’t received as much emphasis in American and Western culture as Christmas has. Sometimes, in my experience, Easter has passed with scarcely a mention, and particularly so if Easter bunnies and Easter eggs are set aside. On the other hand, mentions of Christmas now seem to proliferate in television ads and department store windows even before Halloween. I guess that Easter simply hasn’t been as successfully commercialized as “Xmas” has.
Among Latter-day Saints in particular, though, I think that the primary reason for the absence of Holy Week may be as simple as this: The large majority of our early members and early leaders, not only in America and Canada but in Great Britain and Scandinavia and elsewhere, came from backgrounds in low-church Protestantism. They did not, by and large, come out of the liturgical traditions that most celebrated Holy Week.
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#BecauseofHim: New Ways to Celebrate Christ This Easter
New resources at ChurchofJesusChrist.org provide ideas and ways to share and celebrate Christ this Easter season
https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/new-easter-resources-because-of-him
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