Easter is not a holiday that morphed out of an ancient celebration of a fertility goddess or a spring harvest. Rabbits are notorious for breeding hence the Easter Bunnies. Is it appropriate to use that term to refer to the Resurrection day of Jesus Christ—and is the entire Lent season and Easter holiday tainted by association with ancient pagan religion? While we often hear complaints of pagan influences in connection with Easter, one never hears complaints of pagan Babylonian influences in the Hebrew calendar, as recorded in the later Old Testament narratives. It was originally a holiday to the fertility goddess Aestarte, or Diana of Ephesus in the book of Acts. What are the origins of the Easter holiday? Are these origins Christian or Pagan? According to tradition, Ignatius was the child called by Jesus in Matthew 18:2-3. That’s easy to understand and much more in line with how we remember important events. Not many people today have studied church history. Billie Holiday & Louis Armstrong - Farewell to Storyville. It should be noted that, though Ignatius indicates that first-century Christians abide by the Sabbath, he discourages Christians from following Talmudic Jewish practices common in this period that were over and above the law of Moses. From this Council emerged a formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, which has been affirmed by all orthodox Christians ever since. Celebrating the beginning of spring may be among the oldest holidays in human culture. Where would he get such a notion? (VINE’S EXPOSITORY DICTIONARY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT WORDS, pp. Quarter holidays for modern pagans are typically Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh, and Samhain, a story in and of itself. Easter is a pagan holiday that has morphed its way into Christianity. So why change it to Sunday and call it Easter? In the Christian writers of the first several centuries A.D. (known collectively as the Church Fathers), it's clear that tensions increased over time between the Christians and the Jews. Additionally, many of the Easter traditions “have little to do” with Jesus’ resurrection, states the Britannica, “but derive from folk customs.”For instance, regarding the popular Easter symbols the egg and the rabbit, The Encyclopedia of Religion says: “The egg symbolizes new life breaking through the apparent death (hardness) of the eggshell.”It adds: “The rabbit was known as an extraordinarily fertile … Verse 3 proves it is a reference to Passover because Passover is the beginning of the Days of Unleavened Bread (Exodus 12). I'm not here to defend paganism. Winick was able to track down the earliest mentions of this Pagan myth in print, which was in the 19th century, but there’s no trace of it’s apparent ancient origins. After all, most of us have ancestors from cultures that were pagan at some time in history. Christmas is preceded by the season of Advent, a season of anticipation and reflection of the coming of the Savior. SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/c/Truthunedited DONATE: www.truthunedited.com/donate Your support is greatly appreciated. Most of the objection to the traditional English name "Easter" seems quite overblown if you consider other examples. Easter falls on the first Sunday after the full moon that is usually on or after March 21. Rather, it is a religious observance initiated by the Christian Church as a way to commemorate the resurrection of Christ. Easter is a Christian holiday. Easter, the Pagan Holiday. In pagan culture, the myrtle flower was associated with the goddess Venus, and so the names Hadassah and Esther are in fact equivalent translations. Origins of Easter. So much for those sunrise services. Saying they wanted to apprehend him after Easter makes no sense in a Jewish sense because they would have no respect to the anniversary of a resurrection they did not believe in nor would they have respect for the observance of a fertility goddess. At any rate, Easter bunnies and eggs certainly are cultural accretions that can be easily omitted from Christian worship without discarding the entire Easter celebration. In 1 Kings 6 and 8, we find the month names Zif, Bul, and Ethanim. Easter, also called Pascha (Greek, Latin) or Resurrection Sunday, is a festival and holiday commemorating the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, described in the New Testament as having occurred on the third day after his burial following his crucifixion by the Romans at Calvary c. 30 AD. The origins of the Christian holiday of Easter. No. Although Easter has become known as a Christian holiday around the world, celebrating the sacred death and rebirth of Jesus, the true pagan Easter and its symbols is a clear testament to the historical melting pot of cultures and traditions that make Easter what is today. Christians believe that Jesus, the Son of God, died for our sins on a Roman cross, was buried, and rose to life again “on the first day of the week, very early in the morning” (Luke 24:1). Notwithstanding, the apostle also instructs us to "not let our good be evil spoken of." Although a holiday of high religious significance in the Christian faith, many traditions associated with Easter date back to pre-Christian, pagan times. On Easter, the fast is broken in a joyous feast of celebrating our salvation. The moveable feasts are based on the cycles of the moon, and are essentially counterparts to certain Hebrew Old Testament feasts, and follow similar rules. Easter Sunday is supposed to be the day Christ was resurrected, but even that part isn’t true either. Pagan roots of Easter lie in celebrating the spring equinox, for millennia an important holiday in many religions. Except for the inscribed words, this description sounds suspiciously like an elaborate set of "sun dogs," a very rare parhelic halo phenomenon, a natural occurrence. But today, with all of the information we have available, it is quite easy to see that Easter has no place in a Bible believing household. 6 Things to Know about the Messianic Prophecies of Jesus, This site is a proud member of the Salem Web Network, a subsidiary of, Copyright © 2020, Crosswalk.com. - Letter of the Synod, as reported by Socrates. Since they are based on the cycles of the Moon, the moveable feasts land on different dates each year. To understand what the early Christians did to honor the Messiah, please come on over to thewordandtheway.net. In the books of Moses, we find the month name Abib for the first month (Exodus 13:4, inter alia). Take this and share it among yourselves;  for I say to you, I will not drink of the fruit of the vine from now on until the kingdom of God comes. According to folklorist Stephen Winick, it’s “impossible to tell if Ostara as a goddess ever existed.”. Most Christians ‘Good’ is used to denote holy or just a corruption of ‘God’s Friday’. This difference, however, did not interfere with their communion, although their mutual joy was necessarily hindered. [The parenthesis are in the KJV, I didn’t put them there.] Eastre). Imbolc: The Promise of Spring (Feb. 2) Imbolc translated literally means "in the belly" in Gaelic. How about Halloween? Christianity has been around for 20 centuries, and many cultures have entered in over this time, bringing their own influences. 5:21-22)? Our language, our system of education, law, literature, science, history - just about every field of knowledge - owes a great debt to the pre-Christian cultures of the Greeks and Romans, and the Egyptians and Babylonians before them. It might be “Christian” but it’s not biblical. The son of a pagan father and a Christian mother, Constantine followed his father's pagan ways until the LORD got his attention. The fingernails of Easter have dug into the skin with found memories of finding Easter eggs or celebrating the resurrection of the Messiah. The page talks about factual information regarding how Easter got started in the first place, & how it became traditional not religious. (Here's some interesting connections. One principal objection to this feast is the name "Easter." E aster, which celebrates the resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ, is a holiday actually based on an ancient Pagan ritual. The fixed feasts are tied to the seasonal cycle of the solar year and follow an annual progression where the same holidays land on the same dates every year. This book is an anti-Catholic screed intended to show that every little aspect of Roman Catholicism is actually derived from Babylonian Baal worship. Easter’s pagan roots. This arose from some desiring to keep the Feast more in accordance with the custom of the Jews; while others preferred its mode of celebration by Christians in general throughout the world. The truth is that Easter has nothing whatsoever to do with the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. The name "Easter" is not known in other traditionally Christian languages of Europe. Easter’s pagan roots. * I … This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me. Once again, we find people hopelessly divided. Hadassah was given the name Esther, a Persian word that is exactly the same name as Ishtar. While Easter, as we know it today, was never a pagan festival , its roots and many of its traditions have associations with ancient pagan customs and beliefs. No, Easter is not a pagan holiday. I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer; for I say to you, I shall never again eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God. In a time before modern clocks and calendars, there was simply no other way to maintain any sort of calendar other than the seasonal signposts of the Sun and Moon. 344-345). In the place of factual history, many people - Christians and unbelievers alike - subscribe to unsubstantiated "urban legends" of church history. We had a pretty good argument about that. The primary source for these historical fabrications is a 19th-century book called Two Babylons or the Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and his Wife by Bishop Alexander Hislop. July 4th, 1776, September 11, 2001, your children’s birthdays, the day people die, etc., etc. So for better or worse, we see that Christian and Jewish practices simply diverged from each other over the centuries and that Emperor Constantine did not actively impose a syncretistic version of Easter on the church. Therefore, the date of Good Friday keeps changing each year. ... quoted above) have understood clearly - that Christmas and Easter are basically pagan festivals. If you find a mistake, please let … We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. On the other hand, Judaism had been permitted by Julius Caesar himself, and an exemption to the Roman law had been affirmed by the subsequent emperors. How can we know for sure? This makes its historical motivation decidedly anti-pagan. She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. The celebration of the day of resurrection fell on the month of Eastre (West Saxon) or Eostre (Northumbrian). For example, it's quite clear to anyone that Easter eggs and rabbits are not biblical symbols, and they surely do appear to be fertility symbols. Consequently, Hislop is discredited and not considered authoritative and reliable. The Holiday's Origins and History, The Beautiful Truth and Meaning in the Angel’s Message ‘He Is Not Here, for He Has Risen’, How Firm a Foundation! Another thing to consider: Who remembers historical events by the days of the week? Q: A relative who left the Catholic Church and joined some Messianic-Jewish sect made the comment that Easter was originally a pagan holiday named after some German goddess, Eoster. We had a pretty good argument about that. Think about tombstones. Is Easter really built on an evil foundation? When Is Easter? ... Up next. 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