And Christians in the east call their Easter, Pascha - from passover. The connection between the Jewish Passover and the Christian feast of Easter is real and liturgical.
There are many similarities, but they are not the same. Christians celebrate the resurrection of the Messiah; Jews do not. Neither are pagan.
The connection between the Jewish Passover and the Christian feast of Easter is real and liturgical.
Ishtar Sunday, with rabbits and eggs... I don't think so. Easter has nothing to do with Passover, look at history. I am not intending to offend you, but the truth is easy to find -- if you have the courage to face it.
More on the pagan roots of Easter:
http://torahlifeministries.org/portfolio-post/the-pagan-history-of-easter/
--- or this:
http://mystery-babylon.org/easter.html
The Orthodox don't like the word Easter, that's true. They will tell you Easter the word is an Anglo-Saxon word for a pagan festival. There is a widely cited mistranslation of Acts 4:12 in (among others) the King James version. Hebrew Pesar/Greek Pascha/English Easter. Passover references "...how God "passed over" the Jewish homes and spared the first born Israelites from the fate that was in store for their Egyptian counterparts. While all the Egyptian first born were stricken at midnight of the fifteenth day of the month of Nissan of the year 2448, not one Jewish first born was harmed."
http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/1772/jewish/Passover-or-Pass-over.htm
---
Passover: The Story in a Nutshell
After many decades of slavery to the Egyptian pharaohs, during which time the Israelites were subjected to backbreaking labor and unbearable horrors, G‑d saw the peoples distress and sent Moses to Pharaoh with a message: Send forth My people, so that they may serve Me. But despite numerous warnings, Pharaoh refused to heed G-ds command. G‑d then sent upon Egypt ten devastating plagues, afflicting them and destroying everything from their livestock to their crops.
At the stroke of midnight of 15 Nissan in the year 2448 from creation (1313 BCE), G‑d visited the last of the ten plagues on the Egyptians, killing all their firstborn. While doing so, G‑d spared the Children of Israel, passing over their homeshence the name of the holiday. Pharaohs resistance was broken, and he virtually chased his former slaves out of the land. The Israelites left in such a hurry, in fact, that the bread they baked as provisions for the way did not have time to rise. Six hundred thousand adult males, plus many more women and children, left Egypt on that day, and began the trek to Mount Sinai and their birth as G‑ds chosen people.
http://www.chabad.org/holidays/passover/pesach_cdo/aid/871715/jewish/What-Is-Passover.htm
---
For Christians Easter is the celebration of Christs Resurrection.
Passover commemorates the emancipation of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt.
A mistranslation does not establish equivalency.