What About Easter?

Easter is the spring-time holiday associated with chocolate eggs and bunny rabbits. For Christians it is also the anniversary and celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.

Easter gets it's name from the Saxon goddess of spring called "Eostre". This goddess had a hare's head, or a hare companion, which makes sense when you remember that pagan worship centred on nature and fertility, and hares and rabbits breed like....well, rabbits!

This is also the origin of the Easter Bunny, and strangely, Easter Eggs (what? no chickens?!) - all life was thought to have originally come from an egg, and eggs were another favoured symbol of fertility. The "spirit" Easter Bunny/Hare was supposed to lay its eggs in the grass, and people would go searching for them - the fore-runner of modern day Easter egg hunts.

Read more about Easter Traditions.

The pagans celebrated the arrival of spring, encouraging their gods to bless the re-birth of plants and animals at this time of year.

We know that Jesus was killed at this time of year because the Bible and other historical records tell us he was crucified just before the Jewish festival called Passover.

The exact date of Passover shifts about a bit as it is calculated on the old Jewish calendar which was based on what the moon was doing, and this doesn't tie-in exactly with the modern calendar.

Later, about 350 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, an important meeting of church leaders met to decide whether Easter should be celebrated the day after Passover, even if it fell on a week day, or whether Easter Day should always be on a Sunday. They didn't set a definite fixed yearly date for Easter, or stick to the old Jewish calendar. Instead they made-up their own formula to calculate the date to complicate matters further. Are you ready for this? Pay attention!

Easter Sunday is always the first Sunday after the full moon that directly follows the  Spring Equinox.

Despite it's name, Christian "Easter" has much more to do with the Jewish Passover than pagan spring-time festivals. God instructed Jewish people to celebrate Passover to remember their escape from slavery in Egypt about 1200 years before Jesus. At that time God promised: I will get you out of the mess you've made; I will lead you to a freer life; I will treat you as my own children; and I will save you spiritually.

These are things Jesus promises us today. In Old Testament days a lamb had to be killed as an offering to God to make up for people's sins. When Jesus was crucified he took the role of a sacrificial lamb, and the Bible says he was the last lamb that would need to be sacrificed. Christians believe that when Jesus died, he died for all our sins, and when he came back to life he showed he had conquered sin once and for all.

And that's what we celebrate on Easter Sunday!

Back in the fourth century AD the church devised a whole Easter calendar to remember all the different events in the lead up to the crucifixion and resurrection, things like Pancake Day to eat up all your good food before fasting during the weeks of Lent.

Read more about the origins of Easter.

Read more about The Traditional Church's Easter Calendar.

Read more about what Christians believe.

[A full list of sources used to compile this article can be found under Links - Acknowledgements for Easter information]