It's "Easter is Pagan in Origin" time again - it seems to come around faster every year. Yet again, neo-pagans, anti-theistic atheists and historically illiterate evangelical Christians are uniting in a chorus that "Christians stole Easter and its pagan in origin". Except, ...
... this is complete crap.
The date of Easter is not based on any pagan festival and there is no such festival that fell on the *very* specific date in question: the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after 21 March - a fixed approximation of the March equinox. ...
... Easter falls on this date for purely Christian and Jewish reasons. The gospels say Jesus died and rose at Passover. So Christians began celebrating this at Passover, in line with the Jewish lunar calendar, which is where the full moon after the March equinox part comes ...
from. But this led to some Christians celebrating it *on* the Passover, while others celebrated it on a Sunday around Passover, since the gospels said Jesus rose on the Sunday after his death. Thus the formula above came to be established to make sure it was always celebrated...
... on a Sunday. No pagan festivals came into the calculation at all. This is also why most European languages call Easter by some name derived from he Greek form of the word for Passover: Πάσχα ("Pascha"). ...
... The two exceptions to this are German ("Ostern") and English ("Easter"). These are, *very indirectly*, connected to the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre. The ONE reference we have to her - Bede's *De temporum ratione*, XV - tells us the Anglo-Saxon month that corresponds to ...
... April was called "Eostremonath" (Eostre's Month) because "feasts in her honour" were held in that month. We have no more information about these "feasts" and have no idea exactly when they were held, but they were not the origin of the date of Easter (see above), which was...
... well-established centuries before the Anglo-Saxons converted to Christianity. The feast day just got its name from the month in which it usually fell and so was *indirectly* derived from the shadowy goddess. The German word "Ostern" may have a similar origins or - more ...
... likely - was imported from Anglo-Saxon England, since western Germany was converted to Christianity by Anglo-Saxon missionaries.
Again, we have precisely ONE reference anywhere to this goddess whose month gave Easter its English name and that is the sum total of ...
... information we have about her - in the passage from Bede above. That's it. Nothing about "fertility", no eggs and no bunnies. Anyone who claims they are connected to Easter because of her is making up total crap.
The origin of the eggs is the fact that Catholics ...
... couldn't couldn't eat eggs in Lent and so had lots of them to indulge in on Easter Sunday. The Easter Bunny is a very modern development from an earlier German folk tradition about the "Osterhase" (Easter Hare), which was one of a number of animals associated with Easter, ...
... including the Easter Fox, Easter Stork and Easter Goose. These are all animals that became more active in early spring and so became associated with Easter. Again, nothing pagan. I go into detail on all this here:-
historyforatheists.com/2017/04/easter…
... Or in video form here:-
And I discuss this with @andrewmarkhenry of Religion for Breakfast here:-
And Andrew has his own video on it here:-
The claims that Easter derives from some pagan festival and was a pagan fertility festival involving eggs and bunnies is all total and complete garbage. Please share this thread with people who make this claim and perhapswe can fight against the tide of this fakelore nonsense.
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