Easter in the City of London is rather different from the Easters I enjoyed when I was a Yorkshire country vicar.

There was a routine about the season up there that never varied. On Good Friday morning dozens of villagers would turn out and give the church its spring clean. And then the flower ladies came and turned the interior into a spectacular garden: tall white lilies on the altar, serene in that haughty, statuesque style that lilies have.

Here in London there are no villagers. Well, that's not quite true, for the Square Mile is something like a village in itself and quite distinct from the rest of the metropolis. Trouble is, all the City villagers are commuters working in the finance houses and last Thursday they all went away to the country and won't come back until tomorrow morning. We do hold glorious Easter services at St Michael's, but the congregation travels in from the suburbs for these, as very few people live in the City. The joke is that I am the Rector and my wife is the parishioner.

As the years scurry by, I find myself becoming more nostalgic at Easter - even more so than at Christmas. And I look back at all the different sorts of Easter festivals I have taken part in. I grew up in the back streets of Leeds, between Armley jail and the gas works, and when I was a teenager the great Victorian Gothic church of St Bartholomew was the centre of the universe for me.

I remember especially when Father McCurry became Vicar we did the Way of the Cross - big Jack Windross carrying a real cross - round the streets of Armley one Good Friday. And the Armleyites were amazed, appearing at upstairs windows to watch us, even coming out and joining in the hymns and prayers. Afterwards the church was filled with 800 people and we sang There is a Green Hill and the day ended with all those people standing in that church in a silence you could feel.

Another year Father Sowerby put on a play, the cast stuffed with us teenagers from the youth club. It was a passion play with Christ represented only by a crown of thorns on a cushion in the middle of the lofty chancel - and a spotlight on it. And the music was Ben Britten's A Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra. The play was called The Verdict Is Yours. All the lines were ad lib, interrogation of witnesses. I was made to play counsel for the prosecution and I made Mary Magdalene cry - for real. And she's been making me cry ever since.

Years even before the St Bartholomew days, I went as a seven or eight year old to the Methodist Chapel near Armley cemetery. I can't remember much about it except that the ladies' choir in their fine hats sat up at the front on a high balcony, facing the congregation. My pals and I were oafish enough in those days to get the giggles at the sight and sound of them and frosty Chapel Deacons - quite rightly- would turn round and shush us.

It doesn't matter where you celebrate Easter, but those who don't take part in the church's ritual for this season are missing the greatest dramatic twist ever portrayed: horror to joy, death to life in a single weekend. You couldn't make it up. Or, as one of the early church Fathers put it enigmatically: "It's true because it's impossible."

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.