Simply put most Catholic/Christian churches are packed on Easter because of the Catholic belief of one's 'Easter Duty'. Some debate whether this duty is an official church rule or people who never go simply made the term up as a way to say they go to church on the most important day of the year. Also some claim that since Easter masses are long and generally require going multiple times in one weekend, that makes up for missing shorter masses.

The idea is that by going to church twice a year on Christmas and Easter one is fulfilling their duty of going to church by going to church on the most holy and religious days of the year. Although some debate suggests that Good Friday is in fact the holiest day of the Catholic calender year because it is a solemn day marking when Christ died.

Some people also tie in the tradition of going to church on Easter because they have been doing it for years. For them it has little religious value and they simply do it as part of the Easter holiday in between easter baskets, easter egg hunts, and ham dinners.

I was an altar server from about age 9 to about age 19 and saw this increased attendance every year. We put a lot of time and effort into perfecting every aspect of this event from every piece of clothing to counting steps taken to proper lighting and obsessively on time signals and cues. Again many people seemed to attend for the 'glamor' factor of it all. After all on Holy Saturday (Easter Eve) most churches have long and elaborate masses filled with many stories, intense mood altering lighting, long processions, and very ornate vestments and items. Not to mention elaborately decorated altars. I know many of us altar servers when we became teenagers seemed to take pride in our 'work' and it seemed to be more an act of how well we could put on this show then a strictly religious event. It also became more of a 'job' to put on a full scale special mass with us contributing hours a day to rehearsals and masses; from the Tuesday before Easter to the Monday after it was a full time responsibility. Not to say that it isn't religious at its root, but there is a lot more incentive and 'entertainment' if you will in Easter Eve mass.

Learn more about this author, Maxwell Payne.
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