What Are the Real Origins of Easter?

Good News Magazine ^ | Spring 2006 | Jerold Aust

[Tax-chick]

Thanks! Hugging him long-distance is a good decision, because he'll spit on me instead of you :-).

[Conservative til I die]

Think about theses facts for a minute. Easter is such a major religious holiday. Yet nowhere in the Bible—not in the book of Acts, which covers several decades of the history of the early Church, nor in any of the epistles of the New Testament, written over a span of 30 to 40 years after Jesus Christ's death and resurrection—do we find the apostles or early Christians celebrating anything like Easter.

So frickin what? Easter is the celebration of Christ's Resurrection. Christ's Resurrection is clearly in the Bible. End of story.

The Bible is not an instruction manual.

Seriously, are the Judaizers and Jehovah's Witness-type cults going to trot this stuff out endlessly? Pathetic and sad how all these groups are looking for their little niche that proves they're "the special Christians". Some celebrate Mass on Saturday, some refuse blood transfusions, others are vegetarian, more decide to party like it's 3000 BC and celebrate Purim and Hannukah over Christmas and Easter.

Why not just do what Jesus asked? Believe in Him, take up our crosses and follow Him, perform good works, acts of charity, be merciful, love our neighbor and our enemies as ourselves, and love God?

[Knitting A Conundrum]

I have a niece who managed to spit up on all of my friends when she was a baby. Now her babies get to do the same to her friends...

[Mrs. Darla Ruth Schwerin]

Very well said. God knows man's heart, so anybody can discredit anything they want. It doesn't make a whit of difference to God...

[Conservative til I die]

Yes and no. It started off as Passover, the time sanctioned by God, and evolved into Easter, the holiday. The greek word originally meant just that, Passover, the day ordained by God. Over the centuries it became corrupted and came to mean the holiday, Easter, as well.

You're basing half your argument on the current translation of the word. As you readily admit, in many languages it is still called "Pascha" or something very similar.

The other half of the argument is that Easter/Pascha shares certain symbols and customs with pagan celebrations. So the intent matters not, eh? Most Easter symbols/customs (bunnies, eggs, etc.) are merely secular, the stuff Easter Baskets are made of, or are just "hijacked" to the celebration of Christ.

This same kind of argument is applied to the Eucharist, that somehow drinking the wine is wrong because Horus or some other deity had a celebration based around wine. It's like such people are so intellectually deficient or outright bankrupt that they can't tell the difference between drinking wine to a pagan deity and drinking wine in celebration of Christ.

I also hope you didn't exchange wedding bands with your spouse, which is an ancient pagan custom, or that you don't call the planets by their names (Mars, Jupiter, Venus, etc.) since that is clearly pagan.

[DouglasKC]

So frickin what? Easter is the celebration of Christ's Resurrection. Christ's Resurrection is clearly in the Bible. End of story.

So what? God commanded his followers to observe the holy days he created and ordained, not make up their own. In fact, there's pretty harsh statements about that:

Exo 32:1 Now when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people assembled about Aaron and said to him, "Come, make us a god who will go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up from the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him."
Exo 32:2 Aaron said to them, "Tear off the gold rings which are in the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me."
Exo 32:3 Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron.
Exo 32:4 He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, "This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt."
Exo 32:5 Now when Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made a proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD."
Exo 32:6 So the next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings; and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play.
Exo 32:7 Then the LORD spoke to Moses, "Go down at once, for your people, whom you brought up from the land of Egypt, have corrupted themselves.
Exo 32:8 "They have quickly turned aside from the way which I commanded them. They have made for themselves a molten calf, and have worshiped it and have sacrificed to it and said, 'This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt!'"

Note the red lettering above in verse 32:5. Aaron made an image of the LORD, which is a translation of the name of the true God used throughout scripture. And he created his own feast day to honor the one, true God.

Was God happy? After all, his intent was good. Read the rest for yourself if you think God was okay with this. God commanded that he be worshipped in certain ways and created certain, holy, days.

Why not just do what Jesus asked? Believe in Him, take up our crosses and follow Him, perform good works, acts of charity, be merciful, love our neighbor and our enemies as ourselves, and love God?

All of that, but FOLLOW Christ. Do what he did. Obey God by honoring what he said to honor. Doing so exercises and develops spirituality...draws us closer to God. Failure to do so corrupts quickly, just as Aaron and the rest of the idolaters were corrupted.

[DouglasKC]

Very well said. God knows man's heart, so anybody can discredit anything they want. It doesn't make a whit of difference to God...

A man's life reflects his heart.

[kerryusama04]

Give the Book of Jeremiah a read. History is repeating itself.

[drewmc2001]

interesting points. But I can't help asking myself the question, "is DKC's argument right or wrong, or irrelevant?"

In my understanding of the NT I feel that your position is irrelevant (not to demean you or your position).

You posit that "God doesn't create in vain and he didn't create holy days only to have man ignore them." Yet Jesus himself (God incarnate) said in Mark 2:27 "Then he said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." holy days exist not to lock man down into a formula, but to connect man relationally with God... to fellowship with him.

When I read the entirety of Romans 2, what I come away from it with is an appreciation for the propitiation of Christ's sacrifice and the fact that accepting his sacrifice sets us free from the law of sin and death. The laws of the OT exist to point the way to the Cross, to show us each the need for Christ, because we are unable to uphold every item of the law, and as James said (2:10), that anyone who fails to keep even one point of the law has failed to keep all of the law.

Lastly, if we accept that God's law (which we know to primarily be the law of Love, as seen in I Cor 13) is written on our hearts, then Romans 2:29 rings loudly in our ears, that true circumcision (adherence to God's law, as I understand it) is circumcision of the heart by the spirit, not by a written code.

So, if we commemorate the resurrection of our Lord annually on Easter Sunday (despite the English usage of a pagan holiday to describe that date) and celebrate in our hearts the resurrection of our Lord each day through the testimony of our lives, then there can be no doubt in my mind that the law of the Lord has been written on our hearts more indelibly and deeply than any etchings on stone tablets.

[Conservative til I die]

So what? God commanded his followers to observe the holy days he created and ordained, not make up their own. In fact, there's pretty harsh statements about that:

This passage has absolutely nothing to do with the celebration of Easter. It has to do with Aaron creating a false idol and then he and the Israelites committing idolatry.

You're engaging in some serious eisegesis.

[Conservative til I die]

Give the Book of Jeremiah a read. History is repeating itself.

Care to clarify a bit?

[kerryusama04]

I don't think I can simplify, "read the Book of Jeremiah". Perhaps spanish, "lee el Libro de Jeremiah".

[drewmc2001]

He's not asking you to simplify your post, but to clarify it. I saw your post and didn't understand your POV, and like the other poster would like to understand what you meant by the comment.

[A.J.Armitage]

Since your case is based on contrasting Easter with Passover, you don't get to just invent a difference when people start pointing out that the difference in names exists only in English.

[kerryusama04]

Reading the Book of Jeremiah would clarify my post. If that is too much to ask, the perhaps Elijah's on liner will suffice at 1 Kings 18 v 21.

[Conservative til I die]

I don't think I can simplify, "read the Book of Jeremiah". Perhaps spanish, "lee el Libro de Jeremiah".

Go ahead and be snide if you'd like. Of course, Mr. Wise***, I didn't ask you to "simplify"...I asked you to "clarify". As in, clarify why I need to read the entire book of Jeremiah when you apparently already have a point you want to make. And also, if I am going to spend the time to read all of Jeremiah, what specifically I should be on the lookout for.

[Celtjew Libertarian]

One problem on the egg: The egg is traditionally part of the Passover Seder as well. It's not clear how long that has been a tradition and there is a variety of interpretations as to the meaning.

Here's one interesting essay on the topic.

Chabad.org comments that "A hard boiled egg represents the Holiday Offering in the days of the Holy Temple." another page at the Chabad site notes, "It is the custom of some to begin the meal with eating the egg on the Seder Plate, dipped in saltwater. The egg symbolizes the cycle of life and is also a sign of mourning. At every festive occasion, we mourn the destruction of Jerusalem."

Now, the destruction of the Temple occurred after Jesus's crucifixion. So, if there was an egg in the last supper, it may have been nothing more than something good to eat at a fest. On the other hand, there was the destruction of the first Temple. If the origin of the egg in the Seder was during the Babylonian Captivity, then the egg might have had a place in Jesus's Seder as a reminder of that.

In short, the egg has a lot of symbolism -- symbolism that is not confined to pagan origins. It's not my religion, so maybe it's not my place to say, but perhaps Christians would be better off concentrating on what the egg has come to symbolize, rather than what it may have once meant.

[Conservative til I die]

"Elijah appealed to all the people and said, "How long will you straddle the issue? If the LORD is God, follow him; if Baal, follow him." The people, however, did not answer him."

OK, so who or what does this apply to as it regards the celebration of Easter? Are the Judaizers fence-straddlers? Is it the Christians that celebrate Easter and other allegedly pagan holidays? Is Easter a festival dedicated to Baal? Are Christians that celebrate Easter not quite standing for God?

[kerryusama04]

The point I am trying to make is that every time the believers mixed paganism with true worship, they got warned, then God put the smack down. Since we all have Bibles now, I don't think we're going to get warned again.

[John 6.66=Mark of the Beast?]

The ancient Egyptians, Persians, Phoenicians, and Hindus all believed the world began with an enormous egg, thus the egg as a symbol of new life has been around for eons.


The legend of the Easter Bunny is far from a modern invention. Long ago, the rabbit was the earthly symbol of the pagan goddess Eastre, and was worshipped in the pagan festival of Eastre