After Easter, Some Churches Celebrate ‘Holy Humor Sunday’

Many people refer to the Sunday after Easter as “low Sunday” because of the drop off in attendance following the always-mobbed Easter services. But some churches are bucking this trend by observing on that day an old Easter custom that was started by the Greeks in the early centuries of Christianity. “Holy Humor Sunday” celebrates Jesus’ resurrection.

For centuries in Eastern Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant countries, the week following Easter Sunday was celebrated by the faithful as “days of joy and laughter” with parties and picnics to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection. Churchgoers and pastors played practical jokes on each other, drenched each other with water, told jokes, sang and danced. The custom was rooted in the musings of early church theologians that God played a practical joke on the devil by raising Jesus from the dead.

In 1988 an organization called The Fellowship of Merry Christians began encouraging churches and prayer groups to resurrect this traditional celebration and call the Sunday after Easter Holy Humor Sunday, with the theme “Jesus is the LIFE of the party.” Holy Humor Sunday services are bringing back large crowds to churches on a Sunday when church attendance typically drops dramatically.

Here are some of the creative and hilarious ways that churches have celebrated Holy Humor Sunday:

– Mantua, N.J., United Methodist Church will be observing its 10th annual Holy Humor Sunday on April 23. Last year the Rev. Dr. Karl R. Kraft and his associate, the Rev. Gene Wilkins, showed up dressed as the Blues Brothers to lead the service. Helium-filled balloons with smiley faces were tied to the pews, and there were “humor breaks” throughout the service, giving parishioners the opportunity to tell their favorite jokes. Everyone who came to church received a kazoo to play.

n The three congregations in the Crooked Creek Cooperative Lutheran Ministries in Ford City, Pa., had “a hilarious time” at their Holy Humor Sunday service, reported Pastor April Dailey. “We encouraged people to wear silly clothes, and did they ever!” she said. The organist wore a jester’s cap with bells. A choir member dressed like a hillbilly, braided his long beard, wore ribbons in it and came barefoot. Others wore tie-dyed T-shirts and Dr. Seuss hats. One man wore shorts over long johns.

-Everyone who attended church on Holy Humor Sunday at the Episcopal Church of the Holy Communion in Norwood, N.J., was given a button with a quote from G.K. Chesterton: “Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.”  The cover of the church bulletin featured a print of “The Risen Christ by the Sea,” a painting of a joyful, smiling, risen Jesus surprising his disciples at the Sea of Tiberias.  

The Rev. Robert Smith, rector, distributed a satirical newsletter with this mission statement:  “The Seven Healing Words of a Healthy Church: Laughter Heals the Church of Deadly Seriousness.”

– At the urging of a 96-year-old member, the congregation at Holy Ghost United Church of Christ in St. Louis, Mo., composed of mostly retired persons, sang “Dry Bones,” – “them bones, them bones, gonna rise again.” They also told knock-knock jokes.

– At other churches, clowns have acted as ushers and greeted people at the doors. Church sanctuaries have been decorated with streamers, smiley faces and multicolored balloons emblazoned with messages like “Smile!  God Loves You!”  and “Christ is risen!  Smile!”  Choirs have shown up wearing outlandish clothing – bathrobes, little-kid outfits, rubberized Mickey Mouse ears – and played kazoos and handbells. 

– For his first 23 years as a Methodist Pastor, the Rev. Edd Myers at Centerville/Taylor United Methodist Churches in Brownsville, Pa., said he “dreaded the Sunday after Easter because it was depressing. The large Easter congregation shrank so much by the next Sunday that I often wished I had the day off. Six years ago, that all changed when I read in ‘The Joyful Noiseletter’ about Holy Humor Sunday and decided to give it a try. Now I look forward to the Sunday after Easter, and so do many of our church people.”