Why Easter?
This Sunday, we are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, which is kind of a big deal. A very big deal because we Christians believe that because Jesus died and rose from the dead, so we too will experience resurrection when Jesus returns to establish His Kingdom.
Resurrection is central to the Christian faith. It’s why we don’t fear death. Our earthly bodies are temporary, but on the Last Day, we will be given eternal bodies, just as real but indestructible, all because of Jesus’ work on the cross.
That’s what we are celebrating on Easter.
So why is it called Easter? Where did that name come from? What does it mean? Why don’t we call it Resurrection Day, which seems more appropriate?
On the night before he died, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with his disciples and told them to “do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19) After his resurrection and ascension into heaven, his disciples did just that—they celebrated the Passover meal in memory of Jesus. But in the fourth century, the Roman church decided to separate the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection from the Jewish Passover. This was part of a general move away from anything to do with Jewish tradition and custom.
Easter was moved permanently to Sunday because Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday (John 20:1)—or at least that’s when the empty tomb was discovered. But those early church fathers didn’t put Easter on the Sunday after Passover. That would have made sense. Instead, they put it on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox.
Why?
Well, there were already a lot of pagan festivals around that time. Once Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome, the religious leaders had to switch all their statues, rituals, costumes, and even holidays from pagan to Christian. This “rebranding” seemed like an excellent way to get pagans to accept Christianity more readily. And it worked, for the most part.
There are a couple of theories of how Easter got its name. Some believe it came from the name of the fertility goddesses connected with springtime. The Babylonian goddess Ishtar, the Sidonian goddess Ashtoreth, and the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre—all those names sound somewhat similar to “Easter.” Ashtoreth is mentioned in the Bible a few times—Jeremiah calls her the “queen of heaven” and talks of Israelites baking cakes to her (Jeremiah 7:18)—hot cross buns, anyone? (Ishtar, by the way, is the mother of Baal, another pagan god the Israelites were fond of idolizing.) Rabbits and eggs, or egg-laying rabbits, symbols of fertility, are also connected to these goddesses and their myths.
The other theory is that Easter doesn’t refer to a goddess at all but simply to the Old English word for “rising”— Oeste. It sounds like east because that’s where the sun rises. Hence, “Easter.”
Either way, Easter has become far removed from Passover in both date and tradition. (While Easter does happen to fall on Passover weekend this year, this is not always the case.) Passover was an evening meal with specific rules that Christ said to do in His memory. Since it begins on the fifteenth day of Nisan (the first month of the Jewish calendar), it could fall on any day of the week. Easter is now a Sunday morning celebration involving church-going (mostly), brunch, hot-crossed buns, baskets, egg hunts, coloring eggs, and chocolate bunnies.
Is there anything wrong with that?
Whether or not Easter was named for a pagan goddess, it isn’t a pagan holiday anymore, right? We are celebrating the Risen Christ. When we color eggs and eat chocolate bunnies, we aren’t worshipping pagan gods. After all, we’ve rebranded the egg—once used as a symbol of sexual fertility—to be a symbol of the empty tomb. And the bunnies? Well, they’re just cute.
But I wonder.
I’ve been reading Kings and Chronicles lately, and I’ve noticed something about the Israelites. They tended to mix their rituals. They worshipped God, but they also liked their Asherah poles, their altars to Baal, and their “high places.” Even the good kings didn’t get rid of those symbols of idolatry. I wonder if they told themselves, “there’s no harm in this. I’m not worshipping those pagan gods anyway. I just like this tradition.”
And then I think of poor, hapless Aaron, stuck with the whiny Israelites in the wilderness when Moses disappeared for a month to meet with God. The natives were getting restless, so Aaron fashioned a golden calf from their collected jewelry. He wanted to give the people something to worship, something they could see and touch so that they wouldn’t panic. But then he said, “Tomorrow shall be a feast to the Lord!” (Exodus 32:5) That was Aaron’s way of rebranding the golden calf as an image of God.
God didn’t see it that way.
Whenever I hear of churches sponsoring egg hunts or pictures with the Easter bunny, I think of Aaron, and I get a little nervous. Because I do like my fun traditions, just like those old Israelites. I have fond memories of dying eggs with the kids and manic egg hunts in the backyard. I know I’m not worshipping any pagan gods or goddesses. But am I remembering Jesus the way He wanted to be remembered? Am I following God’s commands or just making up my own?
Just asking.
In my novel, Forlorn, the goddess Ashtoreth, “the vile goddess of the Sidonians” (2 Kings 23:13), appears as a demon. The Bible routinely associates pagan gods with demons. Deuteronomy 32:17 says of the Israelites: “They sacrificed to demons, not to God, to deities of which they had no knowledge— new gods only recently on the scene, ones about which your ancestors had never heard.” In Leviticus 17:7, the Lord commands: “'The Israelites must no longer sacrifice their communal sacrifices to the goat demons that they follow so faithlessly. This will be a permanent rule for them throughout their future generations.”
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, “Look at the people of Israel. Don’t those who eat the sacrifices share from the altar? What am I saying then? That food sacrificed to a false god is anything, or that a false god is anything? No, but this kind of sacrifice is sacrificed to demons and not to God. I don’t want you to be sharing in demons.” (1 Corinthians 10:18-20)
