It is commonly believed that Easter is a non-Christian, pagan holiday that Christians adopted for their own use. Take, for example, these comments from Dr. Brent Landau of Harvard University:
The naming of the celebration as “Easter” seems to go back to the name of a pre-Christian goddess in England, Eostre, who was celebrated at beginning of spring. The only reference to this goddess comes from the writings of the Venerable Bede, a British monk who lived in the late Seventh and early Eighth Centuries, the late 600s to early 700s AD. As religious studies scholar Bruce Forbes summarizes:
Why Easter is called Easter, and other little-known facts about the holiday“Bede wrote that the month in which English Christians were celebrating the resurrection of Jesus had been called Eosturmonath in Old English, referring to a goddess named Eostre. And even though Christians had begun affirming the Christian meaning of the celebration, they continued to use the name of the goddess to designate the season.”
Bede was so influential for later Christians that the name stuck, and hence Easter remains the name by which the English, Germans and Americans refer to the festival of Jesus’ resurrection.
There are numerous claims here which supposedly prove that Easter is pagan in origin – the word Easter comes from the name of a pagan goddess, the pagan celebration of this goddess took place at the beginning of Spring and Spring is in early in the month that the English speaking world knows as April when the pagan celebration took place, that as Christianity grew in Britain the Christians adopted the celebration of this pagan goddess as their own, Christianizing it by making it about the Resurrection of Christ, and as a result the Christians kept the pagan name of the holiday even as it became Christianized.
That seems all well and good until you start to research it. Then all these claims begin to fall apart and it becomes clear that Easter has nothing to do with any pagan celebration. Below I will delve into the history of each of these claims, demonstrate that they are incorrect, provide the correct historical information, and prove through historical research that Easter, both in name and practice, originates as a purely and completely Christian holiday/holy day.
The Eostre-Easter Connection
The association between the Celebration of the Resurrection and paganism takes a major blow right from the start when it comes to the supposed association between the word Easter and the pagan goddess Eostre. The undeniable fact is that the word Easter can’t be associated with a pagan goddess named Eostre.
Why?
Because she never existed.
Dr. Stephen Winick explains:
Eostre, [is] an Anglo-Saxon goddess who is not documented from pagan sources at all, and turns up in only one early Christian source, the writings of the English churchman Bede. Bede may have been right that there was such a goddess, or he may have been spreading the received wisdom of his era, and scholars have debated this point for years. Jacob Grimm, the brilliant linguist and folklorist, is one of many scholars who took Bede at his word, and in his 1835 book Deutsche Mythologie, he proposed that Eostre must have been a local version of a more widespread Germanic goddess, whom he named Ostara. It’s impossible to tell if Ostara as a goddess ever existed outside Grimm’s proposal. As for Eostre, there’s no evidence of her worship except in Bede’s book, and possibly in place names (which could, however, just mean “east”).
Ostara and the Hare: Not Ancient, but Not As Modern As Some Skeptics Think
In other words, there is no evidence whatsoever that any such pagan goddess as Eostre ever existed. The one reference to her, the Venerable Bede, was more likely just spreading hearsay about what he assumed pre-Christian pagans must have believed. It is impossible for Easter to be named after a pagan goddess or pagan celebration when neither the goddess nor the celebration ever existed.
Where then does the word Easter come from? Dr. Beth Allison Barr of Baylor University details:
[T]he word “Easter” originated from a mistaken interpretation of the early Latin-speaking Christians’ designation of Easter week as hebdomada alba, or “the week of albs,” because of the white robes worn by baptismal candidates during that time. Although in this context “alba” serves as the feminine form of “albus,” meaning “white,” some thought it was the word “alba” meaning “dawn.”
Old High German speakers took the word “alba” to mean “dawn” and started referring to the holiday as “eostarun,” which meant “dawn” in their language. “Eostarun” eventually evolved into the contemporary German word for Easter, “Ostern,” and then the English “Easter.”
Why Easter Was Never Anything But A Christian Holiday
This mistranslation may have entered entered English, a language Germanic in origin, as Easter but it didn’t become the sole word used by English speaking Christians until the Sixteenth Century (1501-1600 AD) due to the efforts of William Tyndale and the translators of the King James Version of the Bible. Tyndale didn’t like that the New Testament texts he was translating referred to both the Christian Celebration of the Resurrection and the Jewish Celebration of Deliverance from Slavery by the same name – Passover. So Tyndale intentionally chose to translate the reference to the Christian Celebration of the Resurrection in Acts 12:4 as “Easter” even though the word actually used in the Greek text was Pascha – i.e. Passover. The King James Bible translators followed suit and included his translation of Pascha as Easter in their work. Until thus happened you can find forms of Pascha being used as frequently as Easter. Afterwards, thanks to the influence of the KJV of the Bible, Easter became the word used in England and later in its imperial holdings.
But whichever word you used, the origins of the word Easter goes back to ancient Christian baptismal practices, not pagan goddess worship. On the topic of Christian conversion, baptism, and its relationship to the Sunday celebrating the Resurrection – what we now term Easter or Pascha – Harvey A. Smit wrote:
Around A.D. 150 Christians generally agreed that becoming a Christian involved three stages. The first stage was an initial assent to the faith—what we would call today “accepting Christ as your personal Savior.” The second stage was a probationary period during which the new believer was expected to show the sincerity of his or her new faith by a real change in life patterns. Justin Martyr delineates three requirements for this stage: sorrow for sin, learning and accepting the church’s teachings, and transforming one’s life. The third stage was the baptismal period: believers were required to fast and pray for several days before Easter and were baptized on Easter morning. Through baptism on Easter the new convert participated in the consummation of the Lord’s passion and entered into the new life as a Christian sealed in Jesus’ resurrection.
By the early third century this pattern had become firmly established. The first stage of coming to faith involved an examination of the circumstances under which the convert came to faith, the testimony of sponsors, and the convert’s promise to live as a believer. The second stage involved a full three years of catechetical training. And the third stage, beginning with another examination to determine whether the candidate had lived piously and done good works, took the form of a full week of daily exorcisms, services, prayers, fasting on the final Friday and Saturday, and an all-night vigil of prayer and Scripture reading leading to baptism at Easter dawn.
Easter Baptism: an Ancient Tradition
To summarize: The word “Easter” has nothing to do with a pagan goddess. Said goddess, Eostre, never existed. The word Easter originates as a translation error from Latin to German and German to English. The word so erroneous translated, alba, refers not to the east and therefore a pagan celebration of the goddess of the dawn but to white robes of Christian converts who spent the week before Easter being prepared to be baptized and who were then baptized at dawn on Easter day. The roots of the word Easter are therefore entirely in Christian religious observation and practice.
The Timing of Easter
Easter may be the word used to denote the celebration of the Resurrection of Christ in the English speaking word, but most Christians do not call this celebration Easter – they call it Pascha or Passover. This is because the timing of the Christian celebration of the Resurrection was based on the Jewish Passover because the events of the Atonement of Jesus Christ took place during the Passover. Even the historical disagreement over when to celebrate Pascha is rooted in its relationship to the Jewish Passover. The Encyclopedia Britannica explains:
Fixing the date on which the Resurrection of Jesus was to be observed and celebrated triggered a major controversy in early Christianity in which an Eastern and a Western position can be distinguished. The dispute, known as the Paschal controversies, was not definitively resolved until the 8th century. In Asia Minor, Christians observed the day of the Crucifixion on the same day that Jews celebrated the Passover offering—that is, on the 14th day of the first full moon of spring, 14 Nisan (see Jewish calendar). The Resurrection, then, was observed two days later, on 16 Nisan, regardless of the day of the week. In the West the Resurrection of Jesus was celebrated on the first day of the week, Sunday, when Jesus had risen from the dead. Consequently, Easter was always celebrated on the first Sunday after the 14th day of the month of Nisan. Increasingly, the churches opted for the Sunday celebration, and the Quartodecimans (“14th day” proponents) remained a minority. The Council of Nicaea in 325 decreed that Easter should be observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox (March 21). Easter, therefore, can fall on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25.
Eastern Orthodox churches use a slightly different calculation based on the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar (which is 13 days ahead of the former), with the result that the Orthodox Easter celebration usually occurs later than that celebrated by Protestants and Roman Catholics. Moreover, the Orthodox tradition prohibits Easter from being celebrated before or at the same time as Passover.
Easter; The date of Easter and its controversies
This shows that beyond its common name – Pascha/Passover – the Celebration of the Resurrection has been historically connected not to any pagan holiday but to the Jewish Passover celebration and its relationship to when the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore you could argue that the Jewish Passover has influenced when Christians celebrate Pascha/Easter, but there is no evidence of any kind that paganism of any sort has any influence on when Pascha/Easter occurs.
Further, Christians have been celebrating Pascha since at least the early Second Century AD (101-200 AD), Christianity only came to Britain after 200 AD. It is difficult to imagine that pagan practices from Britain traveled back to Rome and Constantinople where they influenced the name and timing of the celebration of the Resurrection before Christianity even came to Britain itself. Thus, we can easily conclude that the Celebration of the Resurrection, whether called Easter or Pascha, has nothing to do with the celebration of pagan holidays.
Origins of The Easter Bunny
So, the Celebration of the Resurrection pre-dates any contact between Christians and British pagans, there is not nor ever was a British pagan goddess Eostre, and the word Easter is Christian in origin. All of this firmly establishes the name and celebration of Easter is and always has been Christian and not pagan. But what about the rabbits and eggs? Those are never mentioned in the Bible and therefore must surely be pagan, right?
Not quite.
The Easter Bunny has nothing to do with Eostre and there was never any Eostre Bunny. The Easter Bunny is a combination of two parallel traditions, one that saw rabbits and hares as symbols of Spring and another that placed importance on eggs (more on this tradition below.) The first reference to “hare’s eggs,” those being eggs said to have been either laid or left by a hare to found and eaten by children, comes from 1682 AD. This is an incredibly late date for something supposedly springing from pagan origins over a thousand years in the past. You would think that if it were of ancient pagan origin then there would be more on it, even if it were a denunciation of it, especially after the printing business exploded after the development of the printing press two centuries before in the 1440s AD. Instead it appears that what happened was that people in Enlightenment Era Germany created a children’s tale that melded two different traditions – the eating of a lot of eggs on Easter and the symbolism of the hare. The result of this was the story of the Easter hare that laid eggs for good children who then ate them on Easter Sunday at the end of Lent.
Thus, the story of the Easter hare is in its origins exactly what it is today, a whimsical story told to children. It is not, nor ever has been, pagan in origin. This tradition of hares bringing eggs was brought to the United States by Dutch immigrants. It is here that we find the first actual evidence of the Easter Bunny as the tradition of the hare and its eggs spread into American culture sometime between 1800 AD and become a mass produced cultural and market phenomena.
As the century wore on and this new American tradition became more popular people wanted to know why they were having hares/rabbits/bunnies bring eggs to their children on Easter. In response, American newspapers and magazines – ignorant of the true history of Eostre, the Easter bunny, and Easter eggs – completely fabricated the connection of hares to Eostre and the supposed pagan origins of the Easter Bunny and Easter eggs as a way to explain the origins of this practice. Dr. Winick addresses this (and other claims about supposed pagan origins for the word Easter) saying:
[T]he connection between Ostara and a hare wasn’t made until 1874, as a way to make sense of an already popular Easter Bunny tradition.
We probably shouldn’t be too hard on websites that retell old tales about Eostre and Ostara, because such stories were once widely accepted. …But elsewhere on the Internet, in religious tracts or websites about ancient history, you might encounter other claims that were never accepted by scholars: specifically, that Easter is named for Near Eastern goddesses such as Ishtar and Astarte. These claims are based entirely on the superficial resemblance between these names and the word “Easter.” There is no evidence these claims are true, and the languages involved are not related, so such resemblances are very likely to be coincidental. These sites tend to misquote the evidence I gave above from Bede, Grimm, and Holtzmann, making the association between Ostara, Eostre, and hares genuinely ancient instead of a 19th century conjecture. Most of the other claims made on such sites (for example, that hares or bunnies were associated with Ishtar) are pure invention.
This isn’t to say that hares, rabbits, and eggs haven’t been symbols of springtime and fertility for thousands of years…of course they have. But rather than explain their association with fertility and their connection to Easter with conjectures about fertility goddesses, it would be simpler and more accurate to say that these connections arise from common observations about eggs, rabbits and hares. Rabbits and hares have large litters in the spring, and eggs likewise become more abundant, so all these symbols are naturally associated with springtime. All of them are, likewise, obvious fertility symbols, rabbits and hares because they are among the most fertile mammals, and eggs because of their role in reproduction. These observations surely underlie any customs involving eggs, rabbits, or hares in the springtime, whether ancient or modern. The association is based in everyday lived experience, not religion, so these symbols of springtime can attach themselves to any spring holiday, no matter its religious import. In short, we don’t need a pagan fertility goddess to connect bunnies and eggs with Easter—springtime makes the connection for us all by itself.
On the Bunny Trail: In Search of the Easter Bunny
His last point is an important. Even after disproving the idea that rabbits and eggs are related to Eostre, I’m sure there are those that would claim that the rabbits and eggs are still obviously pagan even if we don’t know exactly how currently. But as Dr. Winick further explains, symbols can (and often are) similar (if not the same) without there need to be any kind of cultural overlap between the peoples using the same symbols for the same idea:
A more academic way to express this is that, semiotically, eggs, hares, and rabbits are connected to the springtime indexically rather than symbolically—they are actually present during springtime rather than arbitrarily associated with it. [See this article for more on indexes, icons, and symbols.] This is important because it means the connection is not merely one of cultural convention, but rather exists in nature independent of culture. Thus, two cultures both observing that “rabbits” mean “spring” does not imply any influence of one culture on the other. Even if both pagans and Christians use rabbits as a sign of spring, this does not imply that the pagan religion had any influence on the Christians’ use of the sign.
On the Bunny Trail: In Search of the Easter Bunny, Note 4.
Because rabbits and eggs are a universally observable sign of Spring it is entirely possible for two different cultures to independently use them as symbols for Spring in the same way that two different cultures might use icicles as signs of Winter without any overlap or interaction between them that would allow one culture to adapt the symbol from the other.
The Origin of Easter Eggs
Because rabbits and eggs are universally observable signs of Spring it is entirely possible for two different cultures to use them as symbols for Spring in the same way that two different cultures might use icicles as signs of Winter without any overlap, interaction, or cultural borrowing between them that would allow one culture to adapt the symbol from the other.
Likewise, on this subject, Dr. Barr said:
Many religions and traditional customs have used eggs and even rabbits. But this doesn’t mean that the Christian use of these symbols, especially eggs, is ‘pagan.’ Historical parallels do not equal historical evidence.
…I have seen arguments connecting Easter eggs to Babylonian and even Zoroastrian traditions. But the medieval European world had no knowledge of these customs or celebrations; historians didn’t learn about them until very recently. The most historically logical roots for Easter eggs is their use during Medieval Easter traditions. Eggs were prohibited during Lent, and so in preparation for their return to eating eggs, people decorated eggs and used them as part of their Easter celebrations. This is the most reasonable source for the traditions we continue today.
Why Easter Was Never Anything But A Christian Holiday
In Medieval Europe, all animal products – eggs, meat, milk, cheese, cream, butter, animal fats, etc. – were expressly forbidden during the forty-day fast of Lent that precedes Easter in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions. This process of denial and then allowance during a celebratory holiday meant that these items all took on special significance. Cogent to our discussion here, this artificial scarcity and then festival abundance meant that eggs specifically became important. As British historian, Dr. Ronald Hutton explains in his book Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain:
As Dr. Hutton explains, the giving of eggs as gifts makes sense as they achieved a special status thanks to being forbidden during Lent and being cheap enough that even poor people could afford to have enough to give as gifts at the Easter celebration during the end of the fast. Thus, the special status of eggs during Easter and the giving of eggs as gifts on Easter as “Easter eggs” has nothing to do with paganism. As this tradition developed over time it became enmeshed with other symbols of Spring, such as rabbits, and the concept of the Easter hare delivering Easter eggs was born as previously described. Once again we see both elements of these ideas were of non-pagan origin and, in the case of Easter eggs, explicitly Christian in origin.
Researching the subject of egg coloring specifically, English folklorist and historian Venetia Newall wrote in her book An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study that the earliest date she can find for any mention of coloring eggs in Western Europe is from Poland in the early Thirteenth Century (1201-1300 AD). The earliest case of colored eggs amongst the English was when King Edward the First gave 450 colored eggs to his courtiers in 1290 AD. This became popular and increasingly more common with peasants using onion skins and flower petals to color their eggs. Our first artistic representation of colored eggs comes after 1497 AD when we find a painting of Italians handing out complexly colored Easter eggs from their wicker basket. (Tkach, pg. 9)
Final Thoughts
With that the final attempts to tie Easter and Pascha to pagan roots falls apart. Not only is it not related to a pagan goddess or pagan worship of that goddess, but the symbols that are assumed to be part of said worship – rabbits and eggs – have no connection with paganism at all. The Easter hare doesn’t show up until the Seventeenth Century (1601-1700 AD) and the giving of colored eggs on Easter comes from the way that the Lenten fast’s abstention from eggs turned them into a special delicacy to be feasted upon by all classes of people on the day the fast ended, Easter Sunday. Thus, we can conclude that Easter/Pascha is a completely Christian holiday with completely Christian origins and even the things not explicitly Christian (such as Easter eggs and bunnies) are not pagan in nature but arose out of the confluences of history and the human experience.
With this knowledge it is my hope that Christians can rest easy about the origins and meanings of their religious and cultural celebrations of the Resurrection of Christ. We are not aping pagans as our critics and detractors claim. We are not engaging in anti-Christian or idolatrous practices as we sometimes so worry about amongst ourselves. It doesn’t matter what you call it, Easter or Pascha. Easter is Pascha, the Christian Passover, and remembering that brings to mind the beautiful and divinely intended religious symbolism of Christ as the Lamb of God born during the Passover season, raised without the blemish of sin, and sacrificed during Passover with His blood saving us from the Destroying Angel(s) of Death and Hell as surely as the blood of the lamb saved the Israelites in bondage in Egypt long ago.
Christ surely is our Passover, the scapegoat for our sins that makes our redemption, salvation, and exaltation possible. He is our Prophet, our Priest, our King, our Liberator who destroys the chains that sin lays on our minds, our hearts, our bodies, and our lives. He liberates us captives from slavery to the ideas and animal passions of the world, from the grave and endless sorrow. Because His tomb was empty, one day so shall ours be. Because He was raised to eternal light and life, one day so shall we be. Because He was enthroned at the right-hand of God, so shall we sit down one day upon His throne with Him. One day soon all hatred shall cease, all oppression will be overthrown, and all men shall learn war no more. We will have no contention or conflict of any kind for the very God of Heaven and Earth shall wipe away all our tears and there will be sorrow, pain, and mourning no more. We shall finally, gratefully, and beautifully have Peace.
These are the omnipotent promises of Pascha, the glorious truths of Easter, and they are worth celebrating with all the joy and zeal you can summon.
God bless you and your paschal festivities!
Christos Anesti!
Happy Easter!
When I saw Him, I fell at His feet like a dead man. But He placed His right hand on me and said, Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last, the Living One. I was dead, and behold, now I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of Death and of Hades. (Rev. 1:17-18)