Once again this year I am baffled by how big of a deal Mormons do not make out of Easter. It’s a total non-holiday, while by contrast in most of the rest of the Christian world it is the high point in the liturgical (or even semi-liturgical or not liturgical at all!) year. It is the culmination of at least forty days of preparation, prayer and fasting, and it is the most important holiday in the religion.
By contrast, in most Mormon wards you’ll get some resurrection-themed hymns and probably a talk or two about the Atonement, maybe, or about Jesus generally. And if you confront Mormons about this they’ll say they focus on the Atonement all year long, so they don’t need to go out of their way to make an even bigger deal about it just once a year. Which of course implies that the rest of Christianity is ignoring Jesus all year long except for one big day in the spring. And that is complete poppycock. What Mormons do not understand about Christianity is that there is a cycle, a rhythm to the year of worship, and the climax of all of it is Easter. It’s like the liturgical year is a song about Jesus, but Holy week is the Crescendo, the apex, the high point, the really cool part of the song where the horns come in and it blows you completely away!
What Mormons also don’t understand is that their caricature-ideas about mainstream Christianity is either completely inaccurate or nearly 200 years out of date.
Sailing to Byzantium 
Putting aside Mormonisms views about the rest of Christianity (since I think that probably every denomination is quick to caricature others), what I find sad about it is that Mormons are missing out on really getting to get it.
Not that they don’t love Jesus, and aren’t appreciative of his Atonement. But there is something magical about Christmas and Easter. For Christmas, we celebrate the miracle of a birth. For Easter–Easter!–we celebrate the miracle of the triumph over death. We get to really focus on it, giving it a priority and a single-mindedness that perhaps we don’t during the rest of the year.
I think it varies by ward. Some wards throw a full blown Easter program that rivals the Christmas program. Others do a crappy job of celebrating both holidays.
Inevitable consequence of having a church where nothing gets done unless its the lay membership that does it.
This was the first year that I’ve really focused on a Lenten experience. It wasn’t as intense as it could have been, but the extra focus on sacrifice and especially spiritual discipline with the added benefit of a six-week sermon series building toward Easter made for a very transforming time in my spiritual journey.
I’ve never been in a church where Easter wasn’t a huge deal; however, the added layers of experience, tradition, and study that resulted from that extra emphasis have already made a huge difference in how I understand Easter and how I live my faith.
Maybe it’s not as important in that respect for people who are already really good about their spiritual discipline, but I think there is a lot of value in something that can teach and inspire both the lazy people like me and the hard-core believers that live it every day.