Easter: Celebration or Commercialization?

Music. Well, hey, everybody, and welcome back to Episode 6 of the Life on 11 podcast.

I'm John. In just a second, I'll be joined by Jeremy. And on today's podcast, we're talking about Easter, Christian holiday, or multi-billion dollar enterprise. You decide. So without further ado, let's take it to 11.

What's going on, Jeremy? How are you this week? What's happening, homie? Nothing. Just got done honeydoing all day. It felt like the first legit spring day today in the Shenandoah Valley. Oh, y'all can't see John right now, but let's just say that he's red. I would make a great Jeff Foxworthy joke. He got a lot of sun today. I got a lot of sun today. Does it hurt? I can feel it. It doesn't hurt. No, it's going to hurt tomorrow. Yeah.

I took a cold shower before you got here trying to tone it down a bit. Did you have your wife put some aloe on? No aloe yet. No? Probably before bed. Yeah, okay. Before bed. Yeah, but it's good. We had a great day. Got a lot of honeydew projects done. Nice. Yep, yep. How about you? Back to work today. Had a good but quick weekend. Yeah. Got some work done around the house on Saturday, and then Taylor had a gymnastics competition yesterday, which those are always fun, hanging out with family and

friends. We had quite a crowd yesterday. Yeah. I think it was like 20 some people between all of our families and everybody who was there. I don't feel bad. I don't feel bad. I mean, I've just been lost in the crowd. The meaning would have been gone. But you still could have got some Red Robin. Okay. Then I should have went. Exactly. We had Love Feast last night. Our last podcast was on Love Feast. So we had Love Feast last night. Olivia got her little tiny feet washed. I saw pictures of that.

That's awesome. So that was cool. It was a good night. It was a good night. So now we're kind of ramping up for Easter. What's Easter look like for you guys? Do you do like big stuff? Usually we just get together with my parents and Tara's parents. But my parents, I think, are still going to be in Seattle. Okay. So we might not get to see them. Okay. But I'm sure we'll have like lunch with Tara's parents or dinner or something. Just get together and.

Sweet. Hang out. Sweet. Hopefully the weather's nice. Yeah. Play outside. Nice. That sounds like fun. That sounds like fun. Riley and I were playing outside this evening and he got, he said, it is too hot out here. So we had to go back. Okay. I didn't disagree with him. I was okay. Cause it was kind of warm. Good call. I was like working outside and I went in and looked at Jess, like I'm pouring sweat. And I was like, I'm not going to make it.

Like, I am not going to make it through the summertime. Like, my body has not acclimated yet. Yeah, I don't like really hot. And, of course, I've got a whole day of church stuff on Sunday. Yep. Like, all good things. All good things.

So that actually is kind of the topic. I mean, it is the topic of our podcast today. We're talking about Easter. Oh. We're talking about Easter. Easter. Okay. Specifically, we're talking about the commercialization of Easter. Do you have a dictionary? I don't. Well, I have a computer. Commercialization. Commercialization. What exactly does commercialization mean? Well, let's see.

I'll just put my little search bar here. I mean, I'm not saying that I don't know what it means, but we just might want to make sure everybody knows what we're talking about. That's not meant to insult anybody listening. I want to be clear. The definition, this is from Miriam's, I believe, says, Is the process of managing or running something principally for financial gain? Aha. Principally for financial gain. There we go. So we're talking about the commercialization of Easter.

Yep. So I think we've all experienced this. Oh, yeah. Right? Because, I mean, this could actually be a larger topic for a podcast. But, you know, the one thing that America is really good at is taking something good. And messing it up. messing it up by trying to make money off of it. I mean, it's real. Capitalism at its finest. But I think sometimes. American culture takes something good and says, how can we make a profit off of this good thing?

So absolutely right. One of the things that we looked up before we started recording. So if you're wondering what the commercialization of Easter looks like, it is predicted that in the year 2025, the average United States consumer will spend one hundred and eighty nine dollars on Easter. And that the total that they expect Easter spending in the U.S. to hit $23.6 billion. That's insanity. That people will spend on Easter. That is insanity. Yeah. I mean, I could spend $189 on food for Easter.

Okay. I mean. Okay. I could get behind that. But I'm sure we're talking about like Easter baskets and toys. Yeah. This is basically a second Christmas. Is what it turns into. One of the articles that I was reading to kind of prep for this a little bit, that's what it was called. The Second Christmas? Goodness gracious. I've seen some people get their kids some Easter baskets that have like a PS5 in it and like, what? Nah, we good with that. That's not going to happen. That's crazy.

So when you were a child, when you were wee little Jeremy, what was Easter like? What did you get in Easter? Did you do Easter baskets? We did. We did. But let me tell you how things went down at the Sauna Frank house. Tell me about it. Little Jeremy, who was kind of chubby at the time. So I've, you know, I've kind of grown back into, into that now at my older age, had a time of being slim, which not many people remember. But anyway, chubby little Jeremy had to wear a three piece suit.

Yeah. Mom made me get dressed up. We had to take pictures before we went to church. I had to put my suit on and take pictures before I could have my Easter basket.

Now, an Easter basket for us was like, everybody's favorite the peeps okay yeah there were some peeps always peeps and then like some chocolate and i always had a thing for reese's pieces you know they put them in that thing and make them look like a carrot oh yeah yep yep there was one of those in mine and then maybe like i remember getting like a stuffed animal or something like that yeah and that was it usually okay and then we always had a family reunion on easter okay after church okay yep

that was a son of frank reunion nice nice so growing up that was we pretty well knew what was happening on easter and that's how it went down okay yeah how about you similar our easter baskets were like yours a couple peeps a couple you know little jelly beans did you eat the peeps oh yeah did you absolutely i never eat the peeps oh dude peeps are amazing yeah no they're definitely not amazing. All right. Well, this podcast is now about Peeps. No, I'm just kidding.

Let me tell you something. I see like Dr. Pepper flavored Peeps. Oh, that's sacrilege. Okay. You need to get that away from me. Dr. Pepper Peeps. Peeps are supposed to taste like sugar-covered marshmallows and that's it. What if they were Mountain Dew Peeps? I still, I'm a purist. Peeps are supposed to taste like Peeps. What about Peeps milk where the milk tastes like Peeps?

That is disgusting. thing i'm just okay hey there's commercialization even more right let's take okay all right so yeah so so easter baskets at our house looked a lot like yours the one thing and i don't know that this was necessarily a a thing my parents did every year or if it was just like a stretch of time that they did it but i can tell you that the best easter gift basket i ever got, had the original Space Jam movie in it. Oh. That was life-changing. That was life-changing. Epic.

And so then I think that started like for a few years there because there were three of us kids. We'd always get a movie like for all three of us. And I can remember like we, this is some of the different movies we have. Yeah. But I can to this day remember getting Space Jam and, Like, it's part of our Easter gift. Okay. Right? But like you, like, I would guess my parents probably spent less than $10 a kid. Well, with inflation now, that's probably $100.

The economy has changed, hasn't it? Them peeps are... Woo! Yeah. So, but now, do you do anything for your kids? Like, what do you do? I personally do not do anything at all. Sorry, does Tara do anything for you? There we go. Does Tara do anything for you? Hey, now she's going to be mad at you because you said her name. Okay, well, she can be mad at me. All right, we might have to beep that out.

But anyway, yeah, no, Tara gets like, I think she reuses the same basket every year maybe and just like candy and, I mean, Taylin will probably get like a Starbucks gift card because, of course, she always wants to go to Starbucks. Yeah. And Riley will probably get like a Sonic the Hedgehog stuffed animal or something like that. Nothing.

Yeah. nothing crazy no ps5s or new tvs or anything like that yeah yeah yeah so yeah i mean just similar to how i grew up yeah that's kind of our and like candy isn't a huge thing in our house like our kids don't all the time get candy so it really is a treat for them to get a basket with candy in it because normally that's not a thing and so yeah like you i mean livy will probably get a little stuffed animal you know hayley will get a stuffed animal the boys will probably i'll just get candy,

maybe some random pair of socks or, oh, I think a funny pair of socks. Heap socks. Heap socks. Right.

And so just overall, how do you think tying commercialization of Easter to what Easter is supposed to be, the death and resurrection of Jesus, how do you think that complicates the gospel? Oh, it definitely complicates the gospel, I think, because, you know, our kids, our kids are in public school.

So I know at school, I'm sure they're hearing like kids talking about the Easter bunny and, you know, talking about all those, all those things that, that have helped add to the commercialization of Easter. So we're spending time at home saying, you know what Easter is really about, right? It's really about Christ's death on the cross and resurrection. So the best way for us to teach them that is to like go to a good Friday service

and then get up and go to sunrise service at church and hear the story of what Easter really is. Yeah. Well, and I even think, you know, I think your kids and my kids do like and also participating in. In the story, right? Like they're, they're involved in the Easter celebration, which is a whole nother thing we could talk about, but yeah. And, and I even think about, so we had our, our church Easter egg hunt this, this past Saturday.

And what was amazing to me was how many people like they go around looking for Easter egg hunts and they'll spend like the whole day, just jumping from Easter egg hunt to Easter egg hunt, to Easter egg hunt, to Easter egg hunt.

So their kids get all the experience and it's like that's yeah kind of not yeah what what it's about right yeah and i get it you're trying to make memories with your kids i'm like yeah so we typically we do the church easter egg hunt and that's all we really do we don't go to the parks and rec department we don't go and do all those things like for us the setting that easter takes place in is the church and so we go to our church easter egg hunt and there's a little church down

the road here that will sometimes take our kids to their events because they don't have a lot of kids in their church. And we just, we always take our kids up there because we feel like they do a good job and we've kind of developed relationships with them. Theirs happened to be the same time as ours. So we might grab one of theirs, but really that's just about like this church is trying really hard to welcome kids.

Let's go and let's encourage one another, not just, Hey, let's go get some more Easter eggs or whatever. I mean, you know, when you talk about the reason I think that churches do the trunk retreats, the Easter egg hunts, all of those things at the church is it's another opportunity to get people that wouldn't normally come to church to come to a more comfortable event for them. Right. Something that's more, I don't want to say normal, but more normal to them.

Right. And if that is enough to get them there and get them to want to come back. Right. I mean, then the church is succeeding. Right. In doing that. As long, you know, the church is obviously saying Easter is about Jesus' death and resurrection. Right, right, right. So, like, there's no doubt that that's what it's about. Yeah, we're adding the, we're throwing in the eggs and the Easter egg hunt for. Just to try to help bring some people in.

I mean, that sounds really bad, but it's an outreach. Right. And that is, and I think the other side is too, it also gives for families who don't want to prescribe to the commercialization, like here's an alternative to where you can come to this and it's still Christ-centered and you don't, you know, or trunk or treat, right? Like you can come to a church event. It was actually called Resurrection Party. It was called Resurrection Party.

Yes. So, I mean, in the name, it's very clear what we're doing. Right. And for me, like, that belongs there. But it does seem to taint the gospel a bit that you have, on one hand. Jesus, who was a man who lives simply. And, you know, the Son of Man didn't have a place to lay his head. He taught a very simple message, paid for sin. And then meanwhile, you hit this $23 billion enterprise that many times our culture is just looking to detach.

That's one of the things I will tell you I find really hilarious at some level is the amount of people who I know personally who will deny that Jesus is God's son. They don't want to talk about the gospel. They don't want to talk about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, but they want to buy their kid an Easter basket. I'm like, hold on a second. This holiday is literally about that. And so if you're going to detach it from the gospel, don't celebrate it. Yeah.

You know, like Christmas. Okay. Like I can actually make that same argument for Christmas. Yeah. I mean, you definitely can make the same. And they've both been people do detach. Like you got the Santa Claus crowd. You got the Easter bunny crowd. I mean, yeah. Yeah. It's just very interesting to see how that's happened. And like the amount of people who want to celebrate Easter that are anti-Christian. And it's like, yeah, you don't, you don't see a problem with that.

Like that's literally what this holiday is about. The only thing this holiday is about is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. And now it's, it's been tainted. Yeah, the world has definitely tainted it for sure. Yeah. So how do we reclaim that? Like for Easter or whatever?

Because I would make an argument that lots of things in Christian culture have been taken by the world as money-making enterprises. And that, you know, there's lots of things that we've sacrificed to the altar of making money. So how do we as a church, how do we as God's people kind of reclaim the stake to that? Do you think? That's a good question. Yeah. I mean, getting people getting people in the door to hear hear the word or sharing with them in public.

Yeah. I mean, you have unfortunately, you have to be careful how you do that because you don't want to get punched in the face or anything. But, you know, that's persecution. That's true. That's true. Yeah. So, I mean, that is I mean, having I don't think it's bad to have like the church Easter egg hunt. Absolutely not. Or, you know, to have the Christmas tree at church and bring gifts for less fortunate kids. I think that's all good. Those are all good things. They can exist together.

The church just needs to be more focused on delivering the gospel. Right. So you build the Easter around the story. not try to build an Easter outreach and slide the gospel in, you know, kind of under the radar. I mean, let's be honest, that can be tempting. It can be tempting to be, well, let's do all the Easter things and then we'll just slide a little Bible story in there so the kids get it. And that's, I mean, that's really not helping the cause of Christendom in my opinion.

It definitely needs to be like, I mean, the resurrection party. I mean, it's obvious we're not just having an Easter egg hunt, right? We are talking about Christ's death and resurrection, number one. Yeah, we're going to hide some eggs with some candy in them so the kids can go search for them and have a good time, but we're here for Jesus, right?

Same thing for Christmas. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I think the other, like, one of the things that I wrestle with is, to me, and you've heard me say this for a couple years now at church, I think that Easter is the pinnacle of what the church is about. Mm-hmm. And so, to me, our Easter celebrations should be more than our Christmas celebrations. Yeah. Agreed. Like I think in during Christmas, we can often have all these things.

And so like when I think about it, alluded to this a little bit before that. So Sunday, when we gather, like we are going to have a party. It's going to be a good day. And we are trying to involve people as an interactive that Easter worship is not something that you show up and consume. Which very much a lot of church culture at this point has become consume, right? Yep.

Consumer driven. Yep. Come and listen to somebody sing and listen to somebody preach and sit in the pew and listen, like you just sit there and soak it all in. I mean, you're scrolling through social media. You're basically seeing commercials for churches, essentially. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And so instead, I think one of the ways that we combat consumerism at Easter is we don't make Easter something for our churches to consume.

We make Easter something that our churches participate in, which is why I think things like Love Feast, a Good Friday service, and an Ash Wednesday service to begin Lent.

On Sunday, we will have moments where during the worship service, people have to engage in, Because the moment Easter becomes a product to consume, then realistically, church in and of itself just becomes a product to consume, which is easy to do because many times the churches that are growing are consumer-driven churches, right? And it's hard to fight that temptation because it could be very easy.

I mean, we have some really gifted musicians at our church. We could put on a show. Oh, absolutely. We could put on a show. We could dump money into our audiovisual program and we could get the fancy lights that we could put on a show every Sunday if we wanted to. But would that be doing the gospel justice? Because Jesus, the way I read the gospels, never said, hey, y'all show up and listen to me and y'all just sit down and shut up. And he invited people to participate in the gospel.

Whether that was the jars of water when he turned water into wine, or it was, hey, how are you going to feed these people with the five loaves and two fish? Or it was, Jesus invited people to participate in his mission. Church is not something to be consumed. Church is something to be involved with. So therefore, the message of Easter needs to reflect that, right? Yeah.

And, and, and I'll say like, as a pastor, like it can get daunting because you do have that moment of time where I know like on Easter Sunday, there's going to be people that will come to church that we probably won't see for the rest of the year. Or if we do see them, we won't see them regularly. Yep. Right. And, and I do think that there's something to Easter Sunday, the Holy Spirit working. So you have this moment in time where you want it to, you want it to be powerful.

You want a transformational experience for somebody. But at the same time, we can't create that. And that's at the heart of consumerism is to create something that people want. Exactly. And that's where a lot of churches get in trouble, trying to create a feeling or some kind of specific atmosphere. When that starts becoming your goal, you've commercialized it.

Absolutely. And the moment that like you, you're like, and I mean, I've, I've been in these conversations before as a minister, like, oh, well, if you played this hymn this way with these lighting effects, like you can, you, we can at the emotional level create conviction. But at the spiritual level, the scriptures say it's only the Holy Spirit that can convict.

So there's a difference in creating an atmosphere which makes somebody feel sorry for what they've done and want to make it, and then true conviction from the Holy Spirit. That is a very different thing. And so when I look at what's my job as a pastor this coming Sunday, it is not to create an experience. Even think about this for a second. How many churches don't have worship services anymore? They have worship experiences. Like that is a common- They even call them that, right? Right. Yeah.

And so it's like, come experience this. And it's like, eh, like no way. My job this Sunday is not to create an experience. It is to create, it is to work with God to allow the Holy Spirit to move and to get out of the way so that the Holy Spirit could do what the Holy Spirit's going to do. So as a church, awesome. We hope that everyone will come and be a part of that and kind of push back on the worldly things.

I mean, you even said it before, the amount of money that some people might spend on clothing for Easter. Nothing makes me scratch my head a little bit than people who don't come to church. They don't participate in church regularly, but they will go buy brand new matching outfits for all their kids to come to church on Easter Sunday. It's like Jesus would rather have you participate in the life of the church in blue jeans and a T-shirt every week than in your brand new dress on Easter morning.

Yeah, I mean, there's going to be a lot of people on the old Facebook or Snapchat or whatever everybody's doing nowadays on there with their their Easter best on taking pictures with their family. I mean, that's all that's all good. Right. But you're right. A lot of that is is driven by the consumerism and the commercialization of Easter. Like, you know what every good Christian family has?

An easter picture in matching outfits in front of the church that's what we're supposed to do yes yes yep and that is part of that consumer mindset right yep and then you remake the picture at christmas absolutely at church absolutely we call those christers that's right that's right we had on our church on there a couple years ago we had now open between christmas and easter.

It's just a little big but yeah you really do like and that's the thing and again that is building this public facade of look at us we did something good today we went to church on easter yeah yeah i mean okay awesome and and if that's where you find yourself okay congrats but, Come back next week in your blue jeans and your t-shirt. Yeah. And your hey dudes. Yeah. Yeah. Come back when it's not a photo op. Yeah. Come back when it's not the popular thing to do.

Yeah. Yep. Come back for Jesus. Yeah.

And participate in the working of the gospel, not just consuming a product. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. And if you come to Mount Zion, you can have fried country ham. Oh, of course. We got to end this thing with food. I heard a rumor that- Oh, my goodness. Somebody's making Spam. I heard a rumor that somebody is frying Spam for breakfast. Is anybody bringing corned beef hash? I don't know, but we could make that. We might need to make that happen.

I know a guy who makes some- I know a guy, too. We need to hit that guy up. Okay. All right. So I saw a picture of maple Spam. Is that a real thing? I don't know. I would not try it. What? Why wouldn't you try it? Okay. I just told you that Dr. Pepper peeps are not okay. All right, listen. So you think if I'm not going to eat Dr. Pepper peeps, I'm going to eat maple syrup spam?

Hey, candied bacon is amazing. Okay. So we're just talking about like, if we're doing maple spam, it's like Timu candied bacon. I don't think that's true. I think it is. I think it is. I think it is. You know what one of our kids has inside? Vienna sausage bites in barbecue sauce. Yes. Delicious. Are you serious? Bro, I have had Vienna sausages in every flavor you can imagine. Yeah, but I mean, I'm not debating that, but like they're cut up into little

pieces already. What's wrong with that? I don't know. It seems weird. There's nothing. I'm not getting a Vienna sausage. I want the cracking of the can. I want the whole sausage. I want these little bites.

I don't know what to tell you. I mean, they taste the same as the whole sausage. I am I'm gonna be a fantastic grumpy old man one day you might already be there that just would say I am I I'm a purist when it comes to certain things like you know you're a purist when it comes to Vienna sausages Vienna sausages is a spam that's going on don't mess that is going on the quote wall I'm a purist when it comes to Vienna sausage, What about potted meat? Oh, yeah, yeah. How do you feel about that?

A little potted meat, slice of tomato. Listen, there ain't nothing better than meat you can spread with a knife. You know what I'm saying? Okay. I feel that. I feel that. That's right. Or, you know, you know what Nate Bergazzi would say? No good American needs to know what goes in a hot dog. That's right. That's right. Just get out of the boat. Just get out of the boat. Just get out. Just get out. So, tell us your thoughts on the commercialization of Easter.

Maybe you spend $189 per consumer in your house. Maybe you are one of the ones that will lead to the $28.5 billion. And if you're looking to make a change, you can donate the $189 to our podcast. That's a great idea. And we will ensure that it gets used on potted meat. On potted meat. And Vienna sausages. Absolutely. Someone's going to send us a donation. It's going to say, buy real food. Dude, our faces are going to be on potted meat cans and Vienna sausage cans.

That would be my life's work. The end of the week. That would be my life's work. If that's my legacy, I'm okay with it. Yeah. Or when we die, someone's going to put potted meat and Vienna sausages on our tombstones. There's worse things that can be put on there. That's true. That is true.

Well, happy Easter, everybody. We will see you whenever the holiday's over. We hope that you have a great Easter celebration with your family, your friends. Jesus is alive, and you should be too. Amen. Amen. Music. So that's a wrap for this week's Life on 11 podcast. As always, you can follow us on all your social channels and find this podcast wherever you get your podcast episodes from.

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