The same people who have successfully commercialized Christmas have done their best to do the same for Easter, but to lesser effect.
Roughly 88-95% of Americans celebrate Christmas. About 47% of Americans say they go to church for Christmas. That’s the religious side of the Christmas coin.
On the commercialization side, Americans spend almost $1 trillion, or $979.5 billion to be more precise, during the Christmas season between November and December each year. Pay no attention to those who call this the “holiday season.” It’s the Christmas season, because if you take Christmas away, all of economics collapse.
This will take you back to the 1990s on this tradition.
Now, let’s take a look at Easter. Roughly 80-85% of Americans say they celebrate Easter, which is less than Christmas but still pretty high, indicating that America is still largely a Christian nation.
Here’s where it gets interesting. Roughly 45-50% of Americans say they go to church on Easter Sunday, which is about the same as Christmas church attendance. But when you talk to those who identify as Christians, 62% say they go to church on Easter.
But on the commercialization side of the Easter coin, Americans spend a fraction on the holiday when compared to Christmas, tallying up $24.9 billion on the holiday each year.
Remember being excited to go see the Easter Bunny?
— 👉M-Û-R-Č-H👈 (@TheEXECUTlONER_) March 28, 2026
Doesn’t seem like there’s many kids taking photos this day and age with him.
Was at a mall yesterday and there was also no one in line for pictures.
Do you think it’s strictly the cost of the pictures these days that is… pic.twitter.com/mdM1YqbwHL
What all of this means is that while both Christmas and Easter are the two biggest holidays in Christianity, Christmas still dominates at every level, but Easter has a special place as a largely more religious holiday even though it’s comparable to Christmas in its secular and cultural impact.
To be sure, Easter will never rival Christmas as a secular happening, and thankfully, it doesn’t want to. The story of Easter is quite different from that of Christmas. Much more is known and documented about Jesus’s adult years — his suffering, his sacrifice, and his resurrection — than about the Christmas story. We have witnesses to countless aspects of the Easter story.
It’s sobering and solemn, and on days like today, it’s celebratory.
Commercialization relies on the unknown aspects of a tradition, a story, or a legend, where myths can be created to fill in the gaps. There is plenty of that when exploring the world’s and America’s Christmas traditions, which blend the biblical story with rites and cultural practices developed over centuries to pay homage to the Christmas story and which have given us the secular aspects the Christmas holiday we know today.
As mentioned, I am not pitting Christmas against Easter as religious holidays. But on the commercialization front, Easter, with the exception of the Easter Bunny tradition, is a holiday rooted directly in scripture and in the belief that God became man, that he “sacrificed, died, and was buried. And on the third day, he rose again.”
All the Easter Bunnies in the world can’t compete with that, thank God. So, in that spirit, Happy Easter! He is risen!
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