Now. is that a nice thing to say about The Venerable Bede?
>>>>The Christ-haters teach that Easter is a pagan festival, really. But men such of these speak the words of Satan, who desires to weaken our faith, confuse us and divide us. How wretched it is that slanderers and thieves who, for their lust of money and power, call themselves Christian while they slander the saints and martyrs who celebrated the resurrection of Christ!
>>Now. is that a nice thing to say about The Venerable Bede?
Bede only noted that the British referred to the same lunar month which the Jews established began with Passover, as Eostremonath. He was equally clear that the former pagan religion was quite dead for some long time, and that the celebrations which occured were quite definitely Christian in origin.
Incidentally, Bede's reference to Eostre is the only reference known of this goddess, and it is very possible that he was completely misinterpreting something. Eostre meant "East," an odd name for a goddess. Perhaps the Grimm's tying of Eostre to Ostara was simply repeating a mistake Bede had made, for whereas the notion of Ostara left quite a mark on the people who worshipped such a goddess, there is little trace of an Eostre.
Pagans, satanists, and pseudo-Christian charlatains have supposed Eostre to be Ashtoreth, a Palestinian goddess related to Ishtar, a Babylonian deity. No-one has ever linked any evidence between the worship Ishtar/Ashtoreth and Eoster, or even Ostra, the Germanic God supposed by Grimm to have been what Bede was referring to.
The neopagan association of Eoster to trappings associate with Easter is "fakelore."
Some possible things that Bede might have been thinking of:
Oestrus meant frenzy to Romans, and long-dead springtime rituals among the English seem to have been quite frenzied and goddess-oriented. It is the word from whence we get "Oestrogen," the female hormone. Perhaps Bede, coming from a Latin culture construed some English word (East-month would make calendar sense, and fit the spelling perfectly!) to refer to the worship of some female goddess he knew not of.
Perhaps he *meant* to refer the German goddess, Ostara. England had already been subject to German invasions, and he might have presumed, like Grimm would a millennium later, Eostre to be related to Ostara.
In any event, he certainly reached none of the conclusions that modern Christ-haters have.