Easter Not Important to Mormons

According to a 2010 survey (Moore 2010) by Keith Wilson, associate professor at Brigham Young University, Easter is hardly more important to Mormons than any other Sunday service. Remembering the crucifiction and ressurrection of Jesus is almost completely overshadowed by the General Conference which the Mormon church convenes every first weekend of April – a weekend that sometimes coincides with Easter.

When Easter does not fall in the first weekend of April, it occasionally happens that the subject is mentioned in a sacrament meeting talk or an Easter song but according to Wilson, the lessons which take up about two thirds of Mormon Sunday services, “have no specific focus on Easter”. Nor is much attention paid to Easter in Mormon homes - fewer than half even “knew when Easter was this calendar year”.

Compare this to the exuberant ways in which Easter is celebrated by Christians around the world and one can only feel sorry for those poor Mormons who have to sit through eight hours of of monotonously read sermons by their aged leaders – sermons not about Easter but about the importance of white dress shirts instead of coloured ones, the maximum number of earrings per ear, and the bad example mothers set for their daughters if they wear flip-flops to church (Ballard 2010).

Easter celebrations around the world. Poor Mormons...