Question by ArchAngel: Is Easter a Christian or Pagan holiday?
Each April, chocolate bunnies run amok of grocery store shelves and colored eggs roll out of church Sunday School classes. One may wonder what bunnies have to do with Jesus.
According to the Catholic encyclopedia, newadvent.org and christianhistory.net, the Easter Bunny comes from Pagan celebrations of Spring and fertility in ancient Europe. The Anglo-Saxons and Germans are especially credited with developing Easter’s secular traditions and bringing them to the New World.
The word “Easter” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility, Eostre, which is “Oschter” in German. At the time of the Vernal Equinox, Pagans celebrated the new life of Spring as “mother earth” emerged from the “dead of winter.”
Known for their enthusiastic breeding, bunnies became symbols of fertility (“estrogen”) and springtime in the ancient world. German settlers to America are believed to have brought “Oschter Haws” to the U.S., where Pennsylvania Dutch settlers made nests in gardens. On Easter, the bunny was said to have laid colored eggs. In time, delivering other gifts, such as chocolate, became part of the celebration.
Though various reports bring confusion to the true origins of each tradition, the eggs are considered symbols of germinating life. One thing that is clear is the separation of Pagan Easter and Christian celebration of resurrection.
Christianhistory.net declares Resurrection Sunday was celebrated in the Second Century and developed in the Mediterranean, uninfluenced by Paganism in Germany. The early Christians undoubtedly celebrated resurrection without borrowing from Pagan rites but some degree of fusion took place over time, perhaps in the Roman Empire. Though the timeline of that blending is uncertain, it may have been a matter as simple as language.
Christianhistory.net hypothosizes:
“A contemporary analogy can be found in the way Americans sometimes refer to the December period as “the holidays” in connection with Christmas and Hanukkah, or the way people sometimes speak about something happening “around Christmas,” usually referring to the time at the turn of the year. The Christian title “Easter,” then, essentially reflects its general date in the calendar, rather than the Paschal festival having been re-named in honor of a supposed pagan deity.”
Best answer:
Answer by Corey
Christian holiday with pagan and secular traditions.
What do you think? Answer below!
Is Easter a Christian or Pagan holiday?
Yes.
pagan.
we all rise again.
All the holidays are Pagan!
Jesus wants us to serve the Father everyday!
It’s what you make of it, dude. Period. < ')))><
A pagan holiday raped by christians so that they could get more converts.
Easter is set by the first full moon after the vernal equinox. This is the one day in the year when day and night are roughly equal!
It varies by more than a month over the years and so it simply cannot represent the date of anyone’s death!!!
It is in fact a combination of several pagan festivals most notably the spring festival.
The name Easter comes from “Eastre” an Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess. Also the Norse goddess,Ostara who took her name from the Teutonic lunar goddess Eostre
Even the Chinese have the festival of Ching Ming where flowers and sweets are put on their ancestors graves!!
The egg and the rabbit are symbols of springtime and rebirth along with the custom of giving flowers etc!!
The Venerable Bede, an early Christian writer pointed out that the Christian church absorbed Pagan practices when it found the population unwilling to give up the festivals. Thus a lot of what Christians now see as Christians practices are in fact pagan!!!
Fun to watch the Christians worshiping a pagan festival though – makes it just like Christmas when they do the same thing!!!
Originally pagan, hijacked by Christianity, now reclaimed by pagans and also celebrated by atheists and others, using the secularised pagan symbols like eggs, bunnies and flowers.
festival of fertility….nothing to do with God
Anglo-Saxon and German
Ostara (1884) by Johannes Gehrts.Main article: ?ostre
The modern English term Easter is speculated to have developed from Old English word ?astre or ?ostre or Eoaster, which itself developed prior to 899. The name refers to Eostur-monath, a month of the Germanic calendar attested by Bede as named after the goddess ?ostre of Anglo-Saxon paganism.[15] Bede notes that Eostur-monath was the equivalent to the month of April, and that feasts held in her honor during ?ostur-monath had died out by the time of his writing, replaced with the Christian custom of Easter.[16] Using comparative linguistic evidence from continental Germanic sources, the 19th century scholar Jacob Grimm proposed the existence of an equivalent form of Eostre among the pre-Christian beliefs of the continental Germanic peoples, whose name he reconstructed as Ostara.
The implications of the goddess have resulted in theories about whether or not Eostre is an invention of Bede, theories connecting Eostre with records of Germanic folk custom (including hares and eggs), and as descendant of the Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn through the etymology of her name. Grimm’s reconstructed Ostara has had some influence in modern popular culture. Modern German has Ostern, but otherwise, Germanic languages have generally borrowed the form pascha, see below.
Easter is when Pagans celebrate the fertility Goddess,it is named after the Goddess Eostre,thats just another Pagan festival the church has stolen.
Easter is a Christian celebration
pagans have celebrations around the same time
Jews celebrate passover around the same time….
can’t more than one thing go on at one time.
Easter for me is about celebrating the Glory of the RIsen Lord. if for you it’s bunnies and some pagan gods…. that’s your call but not mine.
Easter was named for the Risen Lord and it’s not for the pagan deity.
WHat happens when someone birthday falls in Thanksgiving or other national or state holiday — aren’t both celebrated with those who WISH to celebrate each!??!?!
1) Is Easter a Christian or Pagan holiday?
Christian.
2) colored eggs roll out of church Sunday School classes
Really? Hmmm….I don’t remember seeing that in Sunday School.
About the rest: well, I’m surprised; your information appears to be accurate. Very much a relief after reading all of the claims about Easter=Ishtar and “Easter is really a Pagan celebration that Christians stole and added Jesus”.
Jim, http://www.BibleChooser.com