If Easter is a celebration of Jesus Christ’s resurrection, how did the Easter bunny and other traditions get involved?
The name Easter, itself, is thought to have originated from the Anglo-Saxon spring goddess Eostre or possibly Astarte, the Phoenician fertility goddess, according to Encyclopedia Britannica. The name is not found in the Christian bible.
“There is no doubt that the Church in its early days adopted the old pagan customs and gave a Christian meaning to them,” The American Book of Days states. “As the festival of Eostre was in celebration of the renewal of life in the spring it was easy to make it a celebration of the resurrection from the dead of Jesus, whose gospel they preached.”
Easter traditions date back to the Chaldeans, or Babylonians — long before Jesus walked the earth.
“Modern-day Easter is derived from two ancient traditions: one Judeo-Christian and the other Pagan,” according to consultants at religioustolerance.org. “Both Christians and Pagans have celebrated death and resurrection themes following the Spring Equinox for millennia.”
The celebrated day was selected to follow along with the Northern Hemisphere’s vernal equinox, which occurs generally on March 20, depending on the year, and marks the beginning of spring.
But the date was long-disputed in the Middle Ages and the Eastern church still follows the Julian calendar, The Oxford Companion to British History states.
The traditions associated with Easter include bunnies, colored eggs, grass-filled baskets, hot cross buns, new clothing and sunrise services.
Rabbits are well-known symbols of fertility because of their rapid procreativity — hence the saying, “multiplying like rabbits.” Symbols of hares were used in ancient European and Middle Eastern pagan spring festivals, Britannica states.
Eggs were also used in fertility rites and decorated eggs were thought to bring happiness, prosperity, health and protection, according to Traditional Festivals: A Multicultural Encyclopedia.
In Europe, children would build nests and whistle or use charms to attract rabbits, said to lay eggs, according to The Oxford Companion to British History.
Even the wearing of a new Easter outfit stems from cult beliefs. “The Giant Book of Superstitions” brings out it is bad luck not to greet Eastre, a Scandinavian goddess, in new attire.
Sunrise services date back to the ancient rite of welcoming the sun and its power to bring about new life, according to The Complete Book of American Holidays.
A cross or a stake?
“The hot cross buns of Good Friday, and the dyed eggs of Pasch (Passover) or Easter Sunday, figured in the Chaldean rites just as they do now,” the book “The Two Babylons” states.
The cross on the bun symbolizes the cross upon what many religions say Jesus died. But its origins, like the name Easter, go back well before the resurrection.
“The cross was a pagan symbol long before it acquired everlasting significance from the events of the first Good Friday, and bread and cakes were sometimes marked with it in pre-Christian times,” states the book “Easter and Its Customs.”
The variations of the symbol of the cross date back to ancient times. One form that later was used in the Coptic Church can be found in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, and a T-shaped symbol was used in Babylonto represent the god, Tammuz.
“In spite of the overwhelming symbolism of the cross, the precise shape of the object on which Jesus was crucified cannot be proven explicitly from the Bible,” says gotquestions.org.
Christendom adopted the symbol, according to “Curiosities of Popular Customs,” as religious leaders could not rid the church of pagan symbols. It was an easy mingling of spiritual beliefs to celebrate the rising of the sun with the rising of the son.
The Greek word translated as cross is stauros. Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words states the word “denotes, primarily, an upright pale or stake.”
In the 1896 book “The Non-Christian Cross,” John Denham Parsons explains there is no evidence in the Greek scriptures, or New Testament, to indicate the stauros was made of two pieces of timber, nor was a cross the primary meaning for stauros in the apostles’ day.
Another Greek word used in the bible is xylon, which translates as stake or tree. In fact, the King James Version, as well as other versions, translates xylon as reading in Acts 5:30 as, “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.”
The Companion Bible says, “The evidence is thus complete, that the Lord was put to death upon an upright stake, and not on two pieces of timber placed at any angle.”
The two became one
“By the middle of the 3rd cent. A.D.,” the Greek scholar W.E. Vine states, “the churches had either departed from, or had travestied, certain doctrines of the Christian faith. In order to increase the prestige of the apostate ecclesiastical system pagans were received into the churches apart from regeneration by faith, and were permitted largely to retain their pagan signs and symbols.”
There is no mention in the bible or historic artifacts of first-century Christians venerating or owning symbols of the cross. Neither does the bible declare the celebration of the resurrection as a holiday for Christians.
It does, however, command Christians to memorialize the death of Jesus on the Passover, said Andrew Foster, an elder at the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Snow Hill.
According to the gospels of the bible, the Christ gave bread and wine to his disciples on the Jewish Passover day, made a covenant with them to be in his kingdom and said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”
That day is memorialized annually on Nisan 14 according to the Jewish calendar, Foster said.
Why the traditions continue
“The history of the church, you know, Christianity,” Wanda Neely, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, said, “has always had traditions.”
Neely, who had been putting up Easter paraphernalia in the church earlier this month, said palm branches were a symbol of victory and triumph, which evolved into a symbol of peace. Eventually, Jesus being greeted with palm branches as he rode on a colt into Jerusalem became a symbol of peace, she said.
“Many of the symbols and traditions,” Neely said, “that are used around the holy days and our celebrations came from secular culture.”
She said there is a link between the divine and the secular world, and she believes God appears on earth every day amongst the secular world.
“It’s pretty incredible,” she said, “God came in human form, conquered death and came back to here.”
Patricia Keesee, office manager at Holy Spirit Catholic Church, said her church puts on an Easter egg hunt and displays Easter lilies and candles.
She acknowledged Easter eggs as originated from pagan customs, but said the candles represent the light of Christ and the lilies as new birth.
“We really don’t discuss that in mass,” Keesee said when asked how the church explains the use of pagan customs with the worship of God. “We have (the egg hunt) because the children have grown accustomed to it.”
She said the children, however, are taught the “true meaning of Easter — the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
Jehovah’s Witnesses use no pagan symbols in their worship, Foster said.
“That’s kind of worshiping the creation instead of the Creator,” he said. “… I guess the world will find any way to celebrate that they can, whether it’s Easter eggs, bonnets, chickens, bunnies, which really have nothing to do with the resurrection of Jesus.”
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.