When this column is published March 22, Japanese readers will just have enjoyed a national holiday marking Shunbun no hi: the spring equinox, the date on which hours of light and darkness are equal. That is a phenomenon more widely noticed in Japan than in the West. But most in Japan — even, perhaps, many expatriates hailing originally from Christian countries — will ignore the fact that the week also contains the most sacred festival in the Christian calendar.

When resident in Japan, I sometimes overlooked the date of Easter, so little noticed is it there. This is in contrast to the other major Christian festival, Christmas, which is enthusiastically observed, albeit in secularized fashion. More than a year ago, I wrote that Christmas had become a global festival, recognized and enjoyed worldwide by people of other faiths and none. Easter, by contrast, remains a Christian ceremony. Many in Britain and elsewhere in the West attend church on Easter Sunday — even those who rarely set foot inside one the rest of the year. This brief outpouring of religious devotion is practiced alongside secular customs such as, in Britain, a traditional meal of roast lamb and the exchange of chocolate Easter eggs. But in non-Christian countries such as Japan, these religious and secular attributes are alike almost unknown.

Why should this be? It may be for the simple, practical reason that Easter is a movable feast: it can fall any time between the fourth Sunday in March, as it does this year, and the last Sunday in April. Its timing is dependent on the appearance of the first full moon after the spring equinox, so that, unlike Christmas, it has no easily memorable date. But I think the real reasons go deeper than that.

In 2006, I speculated that Christmas has been easy for other cultures to assimilate because our modern Christmas festivities draw on pagan traditions. But this is no less true of Easter, the very name of which is said to derive from that of Eostre, an ancient Germanic goddess. The figure of the Easter Bunny and the eggs given during the season are symbols of fertility: The imagery of new life, of nature's annual rebirth, is older than the narrative of Christ's resurrection. If Easter is at heart simply a celebration of spring, one would expect it to be exportable. As it is, the festival is kept in autumn by Australian Protestants and by Catholics in Latin America. Yet in a non-Christian country in the Northern Hemisphere — even one so conscious of the changing seasons as Japan — it passes more or less without comment.

Perhaps it is a matter of doctrine. Easter and Christmas are festivals dedicated to the person that Christians believe to be the son of God. Christmas commemorates the birth of Jesus, Easter his death and resurrection. But the festivities of Christmas are more easily comprehensible, because the birth of a child is a cause for celebration in every culture. By contrast, to believe that a man could rise bodily from the dead requires a leap of faith. In a Christian country, even a secularized one like most in Europe, that leap of faith is part of a cultural tradition, so that even nonbelievers like myself find some kind of meaning in Easter customs and rituals. Without that cultural background, it is difficult to see the Easter story as anything more than an alien myth.

But I wonder if the true explanation says more about the modern world than about the ancient Easter story. Christmas has adapted with ease to capitalism. The traditions of exchanging presents, and enjoying food and wine provide an excuse for expenditure and consumption. European and American high streets record their highest takings in the run-up to Christmas. In an age of global corporate interests, there is a commercial incentive to globalize the Christian winter festival.

But Easter is not like this. Though chocolate eggs generate some seasonal revenue, the festivities at this time of year are distinctly modest. And Easter is preceded by the 40-day season of Lent, when Christians are encouraged to abstain from rich foods, alcohol and other indulgences. That is certainly a custom alien to an age when, at least in developed countries, conspicuous consumption is encouraged and, indeed, regarded as a vital spur to economic growth.

In truth, now that capitalism has supplanted Christianity as the prevailing ideology in the West, Easter has lost much of its importance even there. What profit, then, in exporting it? There is simply no incentive to make Easter an international festival now that we trust less in God than in gold.