For those unfamiliar with our news updates, MyrtleBeachSC News would like to inform you that we provide most of our employees with the entire week off during Easter. We consider it the Holiest week of the year.
We don’t close for Christmas, the Fourth of July, or Thanksgiving, but this is the one week we permit our team to honor a day that had an eternal impact on human history.
Why Is Easter Week the Holiest Week of the Year?
For Christians Along the Grand Strand, Holy Week Represents the Very Heart of the Faith
There is a particular quality to spring mornings along the Myrtle Beach area — the salt air softening, the marshes greening, the ocean warming just enough to remind you that renewal is not merely a metaphor. It is fitting, then, that Holy Week arrives each year precisely when the Lowcountry landscape itself seems to be resurrecting. For the hundreds of thousands of Christians who call the Grand Strand home, and for the millions of visitors who find themselves here each spring, the week leading up to Easter Sunday is not simply another observance on the liturgical calendar. It is the axis upon which the entire Christian faith turns.
But why? What makes this single week — out of fifty-two — the holiest of the year? The answer runs deeper than tradition, deeper than ritual, and deeper than the pastel-colored celebrations that have become synonymous with the season. Holy Week is considered the most sacred period in Christianity because it commemorates the events that Christians believe gave their faith its very reason for existing: the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Theological Foundation: Where Everything Converges
To understand why Holy Week holds unrivaled significance, one must first grasp a fundamental theological claim. Christianity is not primarily a religion of moral teachings, though it contains them. It is not principally a philosophy of love, though love stands at its center. At its core, Christianity is a religion built upon specific historical events that believers hold occurred during one extraordinary week in Jerusalem roughly two thousand years ago [Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Holy Week,” 2024].
The Apostle Paul, writing to the early church in Corinth, made this dependency explicit: “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile” (1 Corinthians 15:17, English Standard Version). This is a remarkably vulnerable claim for any religion to make — staking everything on a single event. Yet this is precisely what Christianity does, and Holy Week is the liturgical embodiment of that claim. Every other celebration in the Christian year — Christmas, Pentecost, Epiphany — derives its meaning from what happened during these seven days [Catholic Education Resource Center, “The Meaning of Holy Week,” 2023]. Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus, but without the Passion and Resurrection, that birth holds no salvific weight. Pentecost marks the coming of the Holy Spirit, but without Easter, there is no Spirit to send.
For congregations across the Myrtle Beach area — from the historic churches of Conway to the thriving parishes of Surfside Beach, from the nondenominational megachurches along Highway 501 to the small AME chapels in the rural communities of Horry County — this theological reality shapes everything about how Holy Week is observed. It is not merely remembered. It is relived.
A Day-by-Day Journey: The Architecture of Sacred Time
Holy Week’s power lies partly in its structure. Unlike a single holy day that arrives and departs, Holy Week unfolds as a narrative — a dramatic arc that takes believers through triumph, intimacy, betrayal, agony, death, silence, and finally, explosive joy. Each day carries distinct weight [United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Holy Week,” 2024].
Palm Sunday opens the week with paradox. Jesus enters Jerusalem to cheering crowds waving palm branches, yet the liturgy pairs this triumph with the reading of the Passion narrative, foreshadowing the horror to come. Along the Grand Strand, many churches process outdoors — a striking image when parishioners carry palm fronds past the maritime forests of live oaks draped in Spanish moss.
Holy Monday through Wednesday are sometimes called the “Spy Days,” referencing Judas Iscariot’s secret arrangement to betray Jesus. These days deepen the sense of gathering darkness and are marked by intensified prayer and reflection [Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, “Holy Week,” 2022].
Holy Thursday (Maundy Thursday) commemorates the Last Supper, where Jesus washed his disciples’ feet and instituted what Christians call the Eucharist or Communion. The word “Maundy” derives from the Latin mandatum, meaning commandment — referring to Jesus’s instruction to “love one another as I have loved you” [Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Maundy Thursday,” 2024]. In many Myrtle Beach area churches, the foot-washing ceremony remains one of the most emotionally powerful rituals of the year, as pastors and priests kneel before congregants in an act of radical humility.
Good Friday is the solemn heart of Holy Week — the day Christians commemorate the crucifixion and death of Jesus. It is a day of fasting, mourning, and profound theological meditation on suffering. The name itself puzzles newcomers: why call such a dark day “good”? Scholars note the word likely derives from an older English usage where “good” meant “holy” or “pious,” though others argue it reflects the Christian belief that ultimate good emerged from ultimate suffering [BBC Religion & Ethics, “Good Friday,” 2023]. In churches across Horry and Georgetown Counties, Good Friday services are often held in near-darkness, with crosses draped in black cloth and the sanctuary stripped of all ornamentation.
Holy Saturday is the most overlooked yet arguably most theologically rich day of the week. It represents the silence of the tomb — a day when, in the narrative, God appears absent. For believers navigating their own seasons of doubt, grief, or spiritual emptiness, Holy Saturday offers profound solidarity [Christianity Today, “The Forgotten Power of Holy Saturday,” 2023]. Many local churches hold Easter Vigil services beginning after sundown on Saturday, incorporating fire, candlelight, baptisms, and the first proclamation of the Resurrection. These vigils, with their dramatic movement from darkness into light, are often described as the single most beautiful liturgy in all of Christian worship.
Easter Sunday arrives as the culmination — the day Christians celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead. Along the Myrtle Beach area, sunrise services on the beach have become a cherished tradition, with congregations gathering on the sand as the first light breaks over the Atlantic Ocean. There is something deeply moving about proclaiming resurrection while standing at the edge of a vast, ancient, life-giving body of water. It is incarnational worship in the fullest sense — faith meeting the physical world in a moment of transcendent beauty.
More Than History: Why Holy Week Still Resonates in the Modern Grand Strand
One might reasonably ask whether an ancient liturgical observance retains genuine relevance in a twenty-first-century resort community known primarily for golf courses, seafood buffets, and beach tourism. The answer, observable across the Myrtle Beach area each spring, is an emphatic yes.
Holy Week resonates because it speaks to universal human experiences that transcend time and geography. Betrayal. Suffering. The fear of death. The longing for something beyond death. The ache for meaning in the midst of pain. These are not exclusively religious concerns; they are human ones [Pew Research Center, “Religious Landscape Study,” 2024]. Holy Week gives these experiences a narrative framework and, for believers, a redemptive resolution.
The Grand Strand’s identity as a community shaped by both tourism and deep-rooted Southern faith creates an interesting dynamic during Holy Week. Visitors arriving for spring break or early-season golf encounter a community genuinely engaged in its most sacred observances. Local churches report that Holy Week services frequently draw visitors who may not regularly attend worship but who feel drawn to participate during this particular season [South Carolina United Methodist Conference, “Holy Week Participation Trends,” 2023]. The accessibility of the beach — combined with the openness of Grand Strand congregations — creates organic opportunities for spiritual encounter.
Moreover, the demographic diversity of the Myrtle Beach area enriches Holy Week observance. African American congregations in the region bring rich traditions of spirituals and deeply emotive preaching to their Holy Week services. Latino communities, growing steadily along the Grand Strand, contribute Via Crucis (Stations of the Cross) processions that are communal, public, and viscerally powerful. The area’s significant Catholic, Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Pentecostal, and nondenominational populations each bring distinct liturgical traditions to the week, creating a tapestry of worship that is remarkably varied yet unified in its central focus [Diocese of Charleston, “Holy Week Resources,” 2024].
The Deeper Claim: Death Is Not the Final Word
Ultimately, Holy Week is the holiest week of the year because it carries Christianity’s most audacious and consequential claim: that death, humanity’s oldest and most implacable enemy, has been defeated. This is not presented as metaphor or allegory within Christian theology. It is presented as event — something that happened in history, in a specific place, during a specific week [N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Fortress Press, 2003].
Whether one embraces this claim, questions it, or rejects it outright, its centrality to the faith is undeniable. And it is this centrality that elevates Holy Week above every other observance in the Christian year. Christmas is beloved. Pentecost is transformative. But Easter — and the week of suffering, silence, and glory that leads to it — is essential. Without it, by Christianity’s own internal logic, nothing else holds together.
For the people of the Myrtle Beach area, living in a place where the rhythms of tide and season already whisper of death and renewal, Holy Week offers something profoundly resonant: the assurance that the pattern of loss and restoration observed in nature reflects a deeper, cosmic reality. The marshes flood and recede. The sea oats bend and rise. And on a Sunday morning each spring, as the sun climbs above the Atlantic, voices along the shore proclaim that the tomb is empty — and that this changes everything.
Further Reading
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Holy Week”: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Holy-Week
- United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Holy Week”: https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year-and-calendar/holy-week
- BBC Religion & Ethics, “Good Friday”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/holydays/goodfriday.shtml
- Christianity Today, “The Forgotten Power of Holy Saturday”: https://www.christianitytoday.com
- Pew Research Center, “Religious Landscape Study”: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/
- N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Fortress Press, 2003)
- Diocese of Charleston, “Holy Week Resources”: https://charlestondiocese.org
- Catholic Education Resource Center, “The Meaning of Holy Week”: https://www.catholiceducation.org
- South Carolina United Methodist Conference: https://www.umcsc.org
