Easter

[Dr. Goodword]

• Easter •

Pronunciation: ee-stêr • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Noun, proper

Meaning: The Christian holiday celebrating Christ's resurrection from the dead.



Notes: You might find it strange that we celebrate Christ's resurrection with rabbits and eggs. As in so many other cases (for example, mistletoe and Santa Claus for Christmas), these symbols have non-Christian origins. Because new life emerges from eggs, they have long been a symbol of the rebirth of nature in spring after its winter-long death. The Persians, Greeks, and Romans interwove this symbol into their springtime celebrations.

In Play: Easter existed long before Christianity as a festival of spring and fertility (see Word History). That is why Easter is not directly associated with the date of the resurrection, but the day of the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The hare (now the Easter bunny) and the egg appeared as symbols of fertility in the original celebrations and continue today despite their pagan heritage. We wish all our Christian friends a happy Easter.

Word History: Easter descended from Proto-Germanic Austron, the goddess of the sunrise, rebirth, and fertility, Eastre in Old English. The root goes back to aus- "to shine" in Proto-Indo-European, the language from which most India Indian and European languages derive. Aus- appears, with the S replaced by an R (rhotacization), in Latin Aurora, the Roman goddess of dawn. It is now found in the name of Austria in both English and German: Österreich "eastern kingdom". Most Western European languages use a variant of Hebrew Pesach "Passover" for "Easter", as in Latin Pasche, French Pâques, Spanish Pascua, Swedish Påsk, and Russian Paskha.

[Slava]

Then again, it might not be Easter. If one is Orthodox, that won't be for nearly another month, May 2.

[rrentner]

I would like to point out a couple errors in your discussion of the word "Easter".

First, Santa Claus has a very legitimate Christian origin (Saint Nicholas, in fact), although his more modern manifestation has been altered considerably over the years by Thomas Nast, Coca Cola, and other re-interpretations.

To say that that the word "Easter" predates Christianity is correct. And Easter bunnies and eggs indeed come to us from non-Christian traditions that have glommed on to Easter.

But to claim that the date of Easter varies each year because it is in any way connected to either English or German springtime festivals is simply wrong.

An agreed upon time for the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus was decided at the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 (coincidently, St. Nicholas himself was at that council!). The calculation for "Easter" to be on the Sunday after the first full moon following the Spring equinox was based entirely on the Jewish tradition of Passover, and not at all on Anglo or Germanic pagan fertility rites.

As you rightly point out, it is really only in English that the Christian Passover celebration is named Easter, so it can hardly be said that modern Christian Easter has its origins in fertility feasts. Rather, England took what had long been a Christianized Jewish holiday, and appropriated a pagan name from a feast that occurred around the same time. Some fertility elements (eggs and bunnies) were added at some point, but were certainly not in the earliest Christian celebrations.