Is Easter a Pagan Holiday?

What can a break point, a daily look, and an ever-changing culture through the lens of

unchanging truth?

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street.

Is Easter a pagan holiday?

Well, in his treatise on the reckoning of time, 8th century English monk, the venerable

bead, proposed that the word Easter comes from the name of a pagan goddess.

Here's what he wrote.

Eustra Manath has a name which is now translated Paschal month and was once called after a goddess

of theirs named Eustara, and whose honor feasts were celebrated in that month, in quote.

Modern pagans, having latched on to this whole idea, further associated Eustara, the

Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility, with Austara, a Germanic goddess of spring.

Both of those names, of course, sound an awful lot like Easter.

While there are multiple problems with this idea, the venerable bead, notwithstanding, burst,

the church had fought for centuries by this point to turn people from paganism.

Therefore, it's unlikely that one of the most important Christian holidays would be named

after a pagan goddess.

More importantly, there's no evidence of a goddess named Eustara aside from bead, nor is

their evidence for a Germanic goddess named Ostarra.

The name Easter is only used in English and its cognate, Ostern, and German.

Everywhere else, even in Germanic languages such as Dutch norwegian or Swedish, the word

is derived from Pascha, or Passover.

This resurrection day was celebrated for hundreds of years before the Anglo-Saxons, or Germans

were even converted, it's unlikely that its name indicates a pagan origin to the holiday.

More likely, bead was either following a folk etymology, or simply guessing.

And the real story of where the day's name came from is probably a bit more complicated.

New converts, after receiving intensive instruction, were baptized on Easter Sunday.

The day was known as Domenica in Albus, or the Sunday in White, because of the white

robes worn by the Catecumans.

It may be that Albus was misunderstood to be the plural of Alba, or dawn, which was

then translated in Old High German into the word Eustara.

And it's likely that the words Easter and Ostern both derive from that word.

Another common argument is that Easter traditions, such as rabbits and decorating eggs, were fertility

symbols with roots in paganism.

Modern pagans even claim, without any evidence that the worship of Astara, involve these

very things.

However, the connection of these items to Easter is much less elaborate and far more recent

than any mythical pagan past.

During the Holy Week fast-proceeding Easter, Christians were prohibited from eating eggs.

The chickens, however, kept laying.

So eggs laid during Holy Week were considered holy eggs.

The practice of decorating them began in the 13th century.

Many centuries after Europe had already turned from paganism.

The egg was seen as a symbol of the resurrection, with Christ, bursting free from the tomb in

the same way that a chicken would burst free from the egg.

As for rabbits, the timing of their association with Easter also eliminates the possibility

that they're a holdover from pagan ideas.

During the Middle Ages, rabbits were seen as innocent, good, harmless, and as such were

sometimes used as a symbol of Christ.

They weren't associated with Easter until about the 17th century.

Other version of the Easter has roots in paganism idea.

Associates the celebration of the resurrection with the ancient Sumerian myth of Thomas and

Ishtar.

This myth, which is an explanation of the annual cycle of death and winter, tells of Thomas

and Ishtar spending half a year in the underworld before having a new birth when they're released

for six months each spring.

That myth bears little resemblance to the three days Jesus spent in the tomb and his

once and for all resurrection from the dead.

And so this story and others like it may in fact be connected to Christianity, but just

not in the way we normally think.

In fact, we most likely have it just the wrong way around.

As C.S. Lewis described in mere Christianity, quote, and what did God do?

He sent the human race what I call good dreams.

I mean those queer stories scattered all throughout heathen religions about a God who dies

and comes to life again and by his death has somehow given new life to men.

Lewis believed that these myths were hints that God gave to a pagan world of the person

and work of Christ.

In other words, the argument that myths are the source of the story of the resurrection

has it exactly backwards.

The resurrection actually happened and it is the reality to which these myths actually

point.

And because the resurrection actually happened, it's worth celebrating with all of our

hallelujahs, raised glasses and an awful lot of joy.

For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.

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