Easter

Easter is considered the most important religious holiday of the Christian liturgical year, observed in March, April, or May to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead after his death by crucifixion (see Good Friday), which Christians believe happened at about this time of year around AD 30-33. Easter can also refer to the season of the church year, lasting for fifty days, which follows this holiday and ends around Pentecost. (See Eastertide.)

Easter controversies

Anti-Easter Christians

Some Christian fundamentalists reject nearly all the customs surrounding Easter, believing them to be irrevocably tainted with paganism and idolatry. Others, like the Sabbatarian Church of God groups, claim to adhere to a more primitive form of Christianity, and keep a Christian Passover which lacks most of the practices or symbols associated with Easter and retains more features of the Jewish observance.

Related Topics:
Christian fundamentalists - Paganism - Idolatry - Church of God - Christian Passover

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Possible pagan influences on Easter traditions

In his 'De Temporum Ratione' the Venerable Bede wrote that the month Eostremonat was so named because of a goddess, Eostre, who had formerly been worshipped in that month. In recent years some scholars (Ronald Hutton, P.D. Chantepie de la Saussaye, Elizabeth Freeman) have suggested that a lack of supporting documentation for this goddess might indicate that Bede assumed her existence based on the name of the month. Others note that Bede's status as "the Father of English History", having been the author of the first substantial history of England ever written, might make the lack of additional mention for a goddess whose worship had already died out by Bede's time unsurprising. The debate receives considerable attention because the name 'Easter' is derived from Eostremonat, and thus, according to Bede, from the pagan goddess Eostre.

Related Topics:
Venerable Bede - Eostremonat - Eostre - Pagan

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Jakob Grimm took up the question of Eostre in his Deutsche Mythologie of 1835, noting that Ostaramanoth was etymologically related to Eostremonat and writing of various landmarks and customs related to the goddess Ostara in Germany. Again, because of a lack of written documentation, critics suggest that Grimm took Bede's mention of a goddess Eostre at face value and constructed the goddess Ostara around existing Germanic customs which may have arisen independantly. Others point to Grimm's stated intent to gather and record oral traditions which might otherwise be lost as explanation for the lack of further documentation. Amongst other traditions, Grimm connected the 'Ostern Hare' (Easter Bunny) and Easter Eggs to the goddess Ostara/Eostre. He also cites various place names in Germany as being evidence of Ostara, but critics contend that the close etymological relationship between Ostara and the words for 'east' and 'dawn' could mean that these place names referred to either of those two things rather than a goddess.

Related Topics:
Jakob Grimm - Ostara - Easter Bunny - Easter Eggs

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Bede's Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastic History of the English People") contains a letter from Pope Gregory I to Saint Mellitus, who was then on his way to England to conduct missionary work among the heathen Anglo-Saxons. The Pope suggests that converting heathens is easier if they are allowed to retain the outward forms of their traditional pagan practices and traditions, while recasting those traditions spiritually towards the one true God instead of to their pagan gods (whom the Pope refers to as "devils"), "to the end that, whilst some gratifications are outwardly permitted them, they may the more easily consent to the inward consolations of the grace of God". The Pope sanctions such conversion tactics as biblically acceptable, pointing out that God did much the same thing with the ancient Israelites and their pagan sacrifices. This practice might explain the incorporation of Eostre traditions into the Christian holiday.

Related Topics:
Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum - Pope - Gregory I - Saint Mellitus - England - Heathen - Anglo-Saxons - Pagan - God - Biblically - Israelite

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However, the giving of eggs at spring festivals was not restricted to Germanic peoples and could be found among the Persians, Romans, Jews and the Armenians. They were a widespread symbol of rebirth and resurrection and thus might have been adopted from any number of sources.

Related Topics:
Persians - Romans - Jews - Armenians

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Easter as a Sumerian festival

Some suggest an etymological relationship between Eostre and the Sumerian goddess Ishtar (http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t020.html http://www.lasttrumpetministries.org/tracts/tract1.html http://www.pathlights.com/theselastdays/tracts/tract_22n.htm http://www.tiral.com/2004/04/the_origins_of_.html) and the possibility that aspects of an ancient festival accompanied the name, claiming that the worship of Bel and Astarte was anciently introduced into Britain, and that the hot cross buns of Good Friday and dyed eggs of Easter Sunday figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now.

Related Topics:
Sumer - Ishtar - Bel - Britain

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At best, any connection between Ishtar and Easter is geographically and linguistically distant, and tangential. In Old English, "Easter" was the name of Goddess of the Dawn, whose festival was observed at the vernal equinox. Her festival is believed to be responsible for the bunnies and the chicks and the Easter eggs - at least as they were celebrated in England.

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Otherwise, claiming a connection between Ishtar and Easter ignores the fact that Easter is called "Passover" in almost every other language in the world. (The only exceptions appear to be the languages of those people who first learned Christianity at the hands of English or other Anglophone missionaries.) The Hebrew Pesach became the Greek Paskha and the Latin Pascha, and from their became Spanish La Pascua and Las Pascuas, Scots Gaelic An Casca ("p" sound mutated to "k" sound), and so on.

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There is the additional problem that the very lands where Ishtar was once known have never been known to use a name like "Easter" for this or any other spring holiday.

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