BEYOND LOCAL: Why Easter is called Easter, and other little-known facts about the holiday

The following article, written by Brent Landau, The University of Texas at Austin originally appeared on The Conversation and is published here with permission:

Easter is quite similar to other major holidays like Christmas and Halloween, which have evolved over the last 200 years or so. In all of these holidays, Christian and non-Christian elements have continued to blend together.Most major holidays have some connection to the changing of seasons. This is especially obvious in the case of Christmas. The New Testament gives no information about what time of year Jesus was born.

The naming of the celebration as “Easter” seems to go back to the name of a pre-Christian goddess in England, Eostre, who was celebrated at beginning of spring. The only reference to this goddess comes from the writings of the Venerable Bede, a British monk who lived in the late seventh and early eighth century. As religious studies scholar Bruce Forbes summarizes:

At the time of Jesus, Passover had special significance, as the Jewish people were again under the dominance of foreign powers . Jewish pilgrims streamed into Jerusalem every year in the hope that God’s chosen people would soon be liberated once more. By choosing this date, they put the focus on when Jesus died and also emphasized continuity with the Judaism out of which Christianity emerged. Some others instead preferred to hold the festival on a Sunday, since that was when Jesus’ tomb was believed to have been found.

“…children were lumped together with other members of the lower orders in general, especially servants and apprentices – who, not coincidentally, were generally young people themselves.”

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