Would Jesus Christ Celebrate Easter?

Each spring the excitement of Easter fills the air. Many churches prepare special Easter programs about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. At home mothers color eggs, and parents hide the brightly colored symbols of Easter around the house and lawn so that, come Easter morning, their children can excitedly hunt for them.

Stuffed Easter bunnies and chocolate rabbits are seen everywhere in the weeks leading up to this major religious observance. Then there are the Easter sunrise services, where churchgoers gather to hear about Jesus' resurrection and honor that miraculous event by watching the sun come up in the east.

But what do colored eggs and the Easter Bunny have to do with Jesus Christ's resurrection? How did these seemingly irreligious symbols come to be associated with that event?

Can we find any historical or biblical record of Jesus or His disciples observing Easter or teaching parents and children to dye eggs and display bunnies on this holiday? Did Jesus or His apostles instruct any of His followers to meet to honor His resurrection at sunrise on Easter Sunday—or at any other time, for that matter?

If Easter was not sanctioned by Jesus or instituted by His apostles, then where did Easter come from? In other words, if Jesus were living among us as a flesh-and-blood human being, would He celebrate Easter or encourage others to do so?

Answers to these questions are readily available. Some may take a little research, but they become clear when we look into history and the Bible.

As surprising as this may sound, nowhere in the New Testament can you find any reference to Easter. In the King James Version of the Bible (in Acts 12:4) you do find the word Easter, but it is a blatantly erroneous mistranslation that has been corrected in virtually every other Bible translation.

The original Greek word there is pascha, correctly translated as "Passover" in virtually every modern version of the Bible everywhere it appears in the Scriptures. It refers to the biblical Passover originally instituted when God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt (Exodus 12:1-14).

The original apostles, from the inception of the New Testament Church to near the end of the first century, when the apostle John died, left absolutely no record of observing Easter or teaching others to do so. From Jesus to John, not one of the apostles gave even the slightest hint of celebrating or advocating the observance of what we know today as Easter Sunday.

However, that doesn't mean the early Church did not hold to specific religious observances. The apostle Paul, some 25 years after Jesus' death and resurrection, plainly told members of the church at Corinth that they should continue to observe the Passover as Christ commanded.

Paul wrote: "For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, 'Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.' In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.'

"For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death till He comes. Therefore whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:23-27).

Paul was concerned that the Church members in Corinth observe the Passover in the right way, with reverence and proper comprehension of its meaning.

The writings of Paul and of Luke, his traveling companion and author of the book of Acts, regularly mention keeping the weekly Sabbath day and the biblical festivals listed in Leviticus 23. But Easter is conspicuously absent (1 Corinthians 5:6-8; 16:8; Acts 2:1-4; 13:42, 44; 17:1-3; 18:4; 20:6, 16).

Since Easter wasn't introduced by Jesus or the apostles, where did it come from, and how did it come to be such an accepted part of traditional Christianity?

It's not that difficult to trace the surprising origins of Easter and what it really represents. Many scholarly works show that Easter is a pre-Christian religious holiday, one that was created and developed long before Jesus' time and carried forward to the modern era through such empires as Babylon, Persia, Greece and finally Rome.

Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words notes: "The term 'Easter' is not of Christian origin. It is another form of Astarte, one of the titles of the Chaldean [Babylonian] goddess, the queen of heaven. The festival of Pasch [Passover] held by Christians in post-apostolic times was a continuation of the Jewish feast . . . From this Pasch the pagan festival of 'Easter' was quite distinct and was introduced into the apostate Western religion, as part of the attempt to adapt pagan festivals to Christianity" (W.E. Vine, 1985, "Easter").

Alexander Hislop, in his book The Two Babylons (1959), explores the origins of Easter. He discovered that a form of Easter was kept in many nations, not necessarily only those that professed Christianity: "What means the term Easter itself? . . . It bears its Chaldean origin on its very forehead. Easter is nothing else than Astarte, one of the titles of Beltis, the queen of heaven, whose name, as pronounced by the people of Nineveh, was . . . Ishtar" (p. 103).

Easter and the practices associated with it can be traced back to various pagan rituals. Hislop explains that "the forty days' abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddess" (p. 104). In Egypt a similar 40-day period of abstinence "was held expressly in commemoration of Adonis or Osiris, the great mediatorial god" (p. 105).

How, then, did 40 days' abstinence come to be associated with a resurrection? Hislop continues: "Among the pagans this Lent seems to have been an indispensable preliminary to the great annual festival in commemoration of the death and resurrection of Tammuz, which was celebrated by alternate weeping and rejoicing" (p. 105).

Tammuz was a chief Babylonian deity and husband of the goddess Ishtar. Worship of Tammuz was so widespread in ancient times that it even spread into Jerusalem. In Ezekiel 8:12-18 God describes that worship and calls it an abomination—something repugnant and disgusting to Him.

The Babylonians held a great festival every spring to celebrate Tammuz's death and supposed resurrection many centuries before Christ walked the earth (see "The Resurrection Connection" on page 18). Hislop comprehensively documents evidence showing that Easter's origins precede the modern Christian holiday by more than 2,000 years!

Hislop cites the fifth-century writings of Cassianus, a Catholic monk of Marseilles, France, on the subject of Easter's being a pagan custom rather than a New Testament observance. "It ought to be known," the monk stated, "that the observance of the forty days [i.e., the observance of Lent] had no existence, so long as the perfection of that primitive Church remained inviolate" (p. 104).

Sir James Frazer describes Easter ceremonies entering into the established church: "When we reflect how often the Church has skillfully contrived to plant the seeds of the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise that the Easter celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted upon a similar celebration of the dead and risen Adonis [the Greek name for Tammuz], which . . . was celebrated in Syria at the same season" (The Golden Bough, 1993, p. 345).

What about other customs associated with Easter? One Catholic writer explains how eggs and rabbits came to be connected with Easter. You will quickly notice an absence of any link or reference to the Holy Bible when it comes to these rituals:

"The egg has become a popular Easter symbol. Creation myths of many ancient peoples center in a cosmogenic egg from which the universe is born. In ancient Egypt and Persia friends exchanged decorated eggs at the spring equinox, the beginning of their New Year.

"These eggs were a symbol of fertility for them because the coming forth of a live creature from an egg was so surprising to people of ancient times. Christians of the Near East adopted this tradition, and the Easter egg became a religious symbol. It represented the tomb from which Jesus came forth to new life" (Greg Dues, Catholic Customs and Traditions, 1992, p. 101; emphasis added throughout).

Like eggs, rabbits came to be linked with Easter because they were potent symbols associated with ancient fertility rites. "Little children are usually told that the Easter eggs are brought by the Easter Bunny. Rabbits are part of pre-Christian fertility symbolism because of their reputation to reproduce rapidly. The Easter Bunny has never had a religious meaning" (p. 102).

Honest Bible scholars freely admit that Jesus never sanctioned this pre-Christian holiday, nor did His apostles. In the centuries to follow among those who called themselves Christian, Easter eventually supplanted the Passover, the biblical ceremony Jesus and the apostle Paul told Christians to observe.

This came to a head with the Emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea—almost three centuries after Jesus was killed and rose again.

Says The Encyclopaedia Britannica: "A final settlement of the dispute [over whether and when to observe Easter or Passover] was one among the other reasons which led Constantine to summon the council of Nicaea in 325 . . . The decision of the council was unanimous that Easter was to be kept on Sunday, and on the same Sunday throughout the world, and 'that none should hereafter follow the blindness of the Jews'" (11th edition, pp. 828-829, "Easter").

Constantine 's decision was a fateful turning point for Christianity. Those who remained faithful to the instruction of Jesus and the apostles would be outcasts, a small and persecuted minority (John 15:18-20). A vastly different set of beliefs and practices—recycled from ancient pre-Christian religions but dressed in a Christian cloak—would take hold among the majority.

Since Easter (with all the pagan symbols that have come with it) was adopted by the Catholic Church centuries after Christ's ascension, should Christians observe this holiday and encourage others to do so?

To answer that question, let's go back to the title of this article, "Would Jesus Christ Celebrate Easter?"

He certainly could have told us to. So could the apostles, whose teaching and doctrine are preserved for us in the book of Acts and the epistles written by Paul, Peter, James, Jude and John. But nowhere do we find a hint of support for Easter or anything remotely resembling it. What we do find, as pointed out earlier, is clear instruction from Jesus and Paul to keep the Passover and other biblical—and truly Christian—observances.

Holy Scripture does not support this pre-Christian holiday and, in fact, condemns such celebrations. Because Scripture condemns pagan practices and the worship of false gods (Deuteronomy 12:29-32), we know that God the Father and Jesus His Son have no interest in Easter and do not approve of it.

Jesus, in fact, is diametrically opposed to religious rituals that supposedly honor Him but in reality are rooted in the worship of false gods. He makes clear the difference between pleasing God and pleasing men: "Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: 'This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me. And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men . . . All too well you reject the commandment of God, that you may keep your tradition'" (Mark 7:6-9).

Easter is a tradition of men, not a commandment of God. But it's more than that. It is a pagan tradition of men that, like other traditions involved in the worship of false gods, is abhorrent to the true God. Jesus and His apostles would never sanction its observance because it mingles paganism with supposedly Christian symbolism and ritual. It is rooted in ancient pre-Christian fertility rites that have nothing to do with Jesus.

In reality, most of the trappings associated with Easter reveal that the holiday is actually a fraud pawned off on unsuspecting and well-intentioned people. God wants us to worship in spirit and truth (John 4:23-24), not to recycle ancient customs used to worship other gods.

Even the timing of the events used to justify celebrating Jesus' resurrection on a Sunday morning—that He was crucified on the afternoon of Good Friday and resurrected before dawn on Sunday morning—are demonstrably false, as an examination of the Scriptures shows.

For those who want concrete proof that He was indeed the Messiah and Savior of mankind, Jesus made a promise: "An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth" (Matthew 12:39-40).

Try as some might, there is no way to calculate three days and three nights from late Friday afternoon to Sunday morning before daylight. At most, this amounts to barely more than a day and a half. Either Jesus was mistaken, or those who say He was crucified on a Friday and resurrected on a Sunday are mistaken. You can't have it both ways.

If Jesus walked the dusty roads of Galilee today, would He celebrate Easter? Certainly not. But He would be consistent because He does not change (Hebrews 13:8). For instance, He would keep the annual Passover in the same manner as He instructed His followers to keep it (1 Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:15-17). And Jesus would observe the Days of Unleavened Bread in the way He inspired Paul to instruct early Christians (1 Corinthians 5:6-8).

Anyone who wants to be right with God, who wants to be a true disciple of Christ, the Master Teacher, will carefully examine his beliefs and practices to see whether they agree with the Bible. Such a person will not try to honor God with ancient idolatrous practices, violating His explicit commands (Deuteronomy 12:29-32; 2 Corinthians 6:14-18; 7:1). Easter, as we have seen, is filled with idolatrous trappings.

Simply claiming that something is Christian or is done to honor God doesn't make it acceptable to God. Easter doesn't represent a resurrected Jesus Christ. Rather—difficult as it may be to admit—it merely continues the practices pagans followed thousands of years ago to honor their nonexistent gods. If we are to escape the calamities prophesied to come on those who place the ways of this world ahead of God, then we must repent of following traditions that dishonor Him (Revelation 18:1-5).

God wants us to honor and obey Him according to His instructions in His Word. Then He can use us to represent His holy Son, our Savior and the Messiah, who will return to the earth. No greater calling can be extended to human beings. May you have the heart to seek understanding and God's perfect will! GN

Enjoy your Passover then. Legalism is defined in following God’s Law. Good luck with keeping that in its entirety.

‘God’s word as set forth in scripture’

See also the above for the odds on a man or woman keeping God’s Law. You have already failed. See the above for finding salvation in the Law, it isn’t there. Luckily, you can also find the path to salvation in the above as well.

‘following God’s word as set forth in scripture’

Another failure for you already.

But if you celebrate, with thanks and reflection, the miracle and gift of the Resurrection and the Promise it fulfills, then you’re on message.

Herein lies one of the problems with Easter celebrations. Like the article says....it can be proved conclusively that the resurrection did not occur on a Sunday morning.....nor the crucifixion on a Friday afternoon. So why would one want to follow a tradition that is obviously in error? Maybe because they have been deceived [Matthew 24:4][Mark 13:6]?

"First day of the Week" occurs 8 times in modern day translations.....never with a religious intent; [Matthew 28:1][Mark 16:2][Mark 16:9][Luke 24:1][John 20:1][John 20:19][Acts 20:7] and [1 Corinthians 16:1]. These are the verses the Church used to establish their false resurrection day. The problem being.......the Greek in all cases says, "On one of the Sabbaths"! With an illiterate laity....they (the mainstream clergy) were able to carry on this fraud for most of their history.

Enjoy your Passover then. Legalism is defined in following God’s Law.

Do you have a biblical justification for that viewpoint?

Good luck with keeping that in its entirety. ‘God’s word as set forth in scripture’ See also the above for the odds on a man or woman keeping God’s Law. You have already failed. See the above for finding salvation in the Law, it isn’t there. Luckily, you can also find the path to salvation in the above as well.

You're exactly right. Trying to find salvation by following God's law WITHOUT the indwelling spirit of Christ is an exercise in futility. However when Christ indwells in us his righteousness makes up for our shortcomings. But we still let his spirit guide our lives. We conform our lives to his will, which is expressed in scripture. Christ observed Passover and told his disciples to do the same.

Enjoy your Passover then. Legalism is defined in following God’s Law.

Nope.....legalism is defined in keeping "Man made" law: [Mark 7:7]. The Apostle Paul even defines it as such in [Colossians 2:14] and [Ephesians 2:15]. Colossians: Blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross; Ordinances: 1378. dogma (dog'-mah) a law (civil, ceremonial or ecclesiastical) decree, ordinance. The Apostle identifies it further(Ordinance) and....... conclusively in verse 8: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. The Apostle is not speaking of God's Law....that is so obvious to anyone who wants to understand correctly!

Ephesians: Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of twain one new man, so making peace; Ordinance.....same word (DOGMA) man made law. Like [Mark 7:7] Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

What do you think God meant when He inspired Moses to write this: [Exodus 12:14] And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever. Do you think he meant for us to only observe this memorial until Our Lord was crucified? Can't you see the greater significance in keeping the Passover as a memorial to Christ as well?

If homosexuality, abortion on demand, rejecting the Bible as too judgmental and patriarchcal is acceptable to the major denominations’ leaders why would they choke on the ‘camel’ of pagan Easter? Why their would their followers be different when they've been fed on Darwinism, the social gospel, environmentalism, and divers other popular nostrum?

Couldn't agree more. Churches and so-called religious people today preach that that all these things are acceptable in God's eyes, that God's laws as set forth in scripture are invalid, outdated, antiquated.

Heb 13:8 Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.

’ Trying to find salvation by following God’s law WITHOUT the indwelling spirit of Christ is an exercise in futility.’

Yet even when Christ dwells in you, you still sin. Christ’s perfection, not our own is the basis of our salvation. In place of the Passover, I’ll take the Lord’s Supper. The Lamb of God is in the latter is identified, not represented by an animal.

‘Enjoy your Passover then. Legalism is defined in following God’s Law.
Do you have a biblical justification for that viewpoint?’

Perhaps I should have added ‘tradition’ as well. Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Agin the ‘Law’. Gal Ch 3, has a fine discourse on the subject, 19 and following.

‘And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the LORD throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever.’

Written to the Hebrews.

‘Do you think he meant for us to only observe this memorial until Our Lord was crucified?’

For the believing Jews and the Gentiles, Yes.

‘Can’t you see the greater significance in keeping the Passover as a memorial to Christ as well?’

The Lords Supper is the memorial to Christ as commanded.

Yet even when Christ dwells in you, you still sin. Christ’s perfection, not our own is the basis of our salvation.

Which is exactly what I said. Christ makes up for our shortcomings.

In place of the Passover, I’ll take the Lord’s Supper. The Lamb of God is in the latter is identified, not represented by an animal.

The Lord's supper was done on Passover and was meant to be done once a year, on Passover, as a reminder of the atoning death of our Lord and Saviour.

Luk 22:15 And he said unto them, With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer:
Luk 22:16 For I say unto you, I will not any more eat thereof, until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God.
Luk 22:17 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and said, Take this, and divide it among yourselves:
Luk 22:18 For I say unto you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine, until the kingdom of God shall come.
Luk 22:19 And he took bread, and gave thanks, and broke it, and gave unto them, saying, This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me.
Luk 22:20 Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.

Tradition has turned this yearly observance into something else.

Perhaps I should have added ‘tradition’ as well. Jesus healed on the Sabbath. Agin the ‘Law’. Gal Ch 3, has a fine discourse on the subject, 19 and following.

There is nothing in scripture that prohibits doing good or healing on the sabbath. The Jews had created an elaborate set of manmade law that had this prohibition, but as Christ pointed out, it was not scriptural.

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