Here are the winning essays from the 2007 Easter Essay Contest written by students at SJSU. The topic of the essay was "What Easter Means To Me".

Matthew Frise, Senior

Describing what Easter means to me is like sharing my opinion of my neighbor: since there seem to be several, I must first specify the subject.  By “Easter” I might mean all that ruckus about a mute bunny who is princely beyond words in sharing his candy-filled eggs—a miniature Christmas slowly growing larger but with nicer weather. But I might also mean something infinitely more important to Christians. That is, the celebration of Christ’s resurrection.

But I am mistaken—it has meaning is not merely to Christians but to all creatures capable of looking toward the heavens or chewing their nails. Its importance is so great that perhaps Christians need not speak of it. Maybe the reveling smiles that bob in the street and the silent knees we take to in prayer will say all that needs to be said. Every holy day has both a secular mascot who tries to steal the show and semi-religious traditions which might spoil when we forget that which they honor. Both are capable of elbowing what is holy off of the day. All I know is no words can capture the magnitude of this event or the proper response it evokes, and both may better be understood by means of observation than by explanation.

And we can observe the significance of Christ’s resurrection by observing that it is what makes all things significant. It is the light by which we see a beautiful world; it is the sight of victory flying over the horizon after a lifetime in the trenches; it is, though he might not have meant them so, in the last words of Ivan Ilych: “Death is gone. It is no more!”

 Graduate Student Jesse Martin

Up from the grave He arose!

With a mighty triumph o’er His foes!

He arose the victor from the dark domain

And He lives forever with His saints to reign!

He arose! He arose!

Hallelujah! Christ arose!

            I was planning for “Pan’s Labyrinth” to be my new favorite movie, but I ended up leaving half way through because it was so terrifying.  A little girl must enter a corridor where a faceless demon sits slumped at a table.  She awakens him by eating the forbidden fruit, and he begins to straighten.  He turns his hands palm upwards, and there are slits in his palms.  He places eyeballs into those slits and raises his hands to his forehead so that he can see. 

            In the middle of the night, my eyes shot open. For hours I was transfixed by the image of that demon.  I felt abandoned by God to this fear, as I felt he had abandoned me to depression for many months past. 

            I couldn’t stop picturing the creature.  He was pale and the skin hung in folds on his neck and his hips.  His hands and mouth were blood red.  I remembered the slits in his palms, and in a moment the Holy Spirit showed me Jesus Christ with holes in His hands as well!  But instead of the results of demonic perversion, He received His wounds championing me.  Instead of the blood of victims, the blood He shed was His own. 

He lay in an underground lair for a time as well.  But where the Pale Man was imprisoned there, the expression of every demonic, violent and selfish idea, Jesus submitted to imprisonment, and when He emerged to redeem and save, the tomb knew it never held Him against His will.

            Now when I have a vision of the demon chasing me, eye-palm outstretched, I take refuge behind Jesus, who extends His palm.  Light shoots from his wounds, obliterating the Pale Man.  I know He will not abandon me—to this paralyzing fear or to the depression I have been suffering under.  The resurrection is proof of His power over every emotion that holds me powerless.