Easter is better than Christmas, for many reasons. If, like me, you grew up in a religious household, you will know this is because the Easter festival is the main event, AKA the Resurrection, while Christmas is just the warm-up band, in which some bloke and his missus forget to book a hotel and accidentally invent Airbnb to solve the problem. Or, at least, I think that’s it.
But even if you ignore the theological side, Easter has Christmas well beaten. Christmas is, of course, primarily a holiday about discomfort: an uncomfortable train journey to a bad night’s sleep in a bed that’s not your own. You can’t find anything in the kitchen; the toothpaste is different; and the radio is tuned to the wrong station. And that’s assuming you like your relatives and they like you. If you don’t, Christmas is a holiday about disappointment: disappointing train journeys (because they take you towards your relatives), disappointing relatives (because they haven’t changed) and disappointing gifts (because your relatives either don’t understand or simply dislike you). And it’s cold.
By contrast, at Easter you get to stay at home, in the company of people you like, and mostly in good weather. But the most important reason why Easter is better than Christmas is not about religion, or the weather, or even getting to avoid your family. The biggest reason why Easter beats Christmas hands down is the food.
This is partly because, as far as both festivals are concerned, the meals themselves are primarily about stealing a march on the competition. People are more likely to convert if they can keep celebrating the old holiday, or at least a suspiciously similar substitute. In the case of Christmas, the early Church was tapping into the customs of the northern pagans they were trying to win over: hunt meat, kill meat, roast meat. We’re not talking about a rich culinary tradition here. Whereas in the case of Easter, the festival is rooted in the Jewish festival of Passover, where the first Christians had centuries worth of good eating to appropriate. You can even see this force at work with the two festivals’ chosen joints: the Easter lamb and the Christmas turkey. The first Christians had been cooking lamb for centuries, and already knew how to get the best out of it. But when it comes to turkey, Christians had to first spread from Jerusalem to Europe, wait for around a thousand years, then cross the Atlantic to colonise the Americas before finally acquiring the Yuletide centrepiece that we know today. And then it was only turkey, surely the most disappointing of all of the roasts – we are still a long way from getting the best out of it.
As far as cake goes, Easter, again, beats Christmas hands down: simnel cake and the unimaginatively named Christmas cake are cousins of a sort, but simnel cake is tastier and easier to bake to boot. This fruit-based dessert has been around since medieval times, which is also, by a handy coincidence, roughly when you should have started planning to make your Christmas cake according to most recipes. Why you’d bother, I’m not sure.
And then there are hot cross buns, a somewhat idiosyncratic way of commemorating one man’s incredibly painful death, but a delicious way to start the day nonetheless.
Plus of course, chocolate, whether egg-shaped or not, but, for reasons I have never been entirely clear on, is an integral part of the Easter celebration. This was even true when I was growing up. Chocolate might never have made its way into church on Christmas day, but Cadbury’s Creme Eggs were definitely present on Easter Sunday.
And because Easter is a short holiday, none of these foods have time to wear out their welcome, unlike the vast swathes of turkey and other leftovers from the Christmas feast.
But the very best thing about Easter eating is how good it is if you do Lent in some way, shape or form. Whether that means going for the hardcore option of cutting dairy and eggs out of your diet entirely or simply giving up jam or chocolate, the first taste after your fast is always the best. Abstaining from something delicious for any month can be good for your health and your figure if you can keep it up, but it’s even better for the tastebuds if you quit when Lent is over. There’s nothing like the first chocolate bar of Easter.
Go one better and actually stop eating all of the ingredients of a pancake after Shrove Tuesday: I can’t vouch for any spiritual enlightenment to be had, but there is certainly a greater understanding of the value of butter to be unlocked.
And that’s an experience that cannot be recreated at Christmas, that’s for certain. Well, unless you count going without turkey for 12 months. Which, to be frank, is more of a pleasure than a chore. But even that, in my experience, doesn’t come close to the culinary magic of Easter.
- Stephen Bush is a writer and columnist for the New Statesman @stephenkb
