Why Easter?

Why Easter? Isn't Easter pagan or something? Aren't we supposed to remember Jesus every week? Is the devil trying to brainwash my kids with chocolate rabbits and marshmallow Peeps?

As a minister, I get those questions every year, and I'll admit that I used to spend a lot of time worried about it myself. Let me share a few details that might clarify things. Be warned! A nerdy deep-dive is ahead!

The logic of celebrating any day as special from another is the same as celebrating a birthday or anniversary. Of course, you remember and love your spouse every day of the year, but once a year, it is good to remember the day of your wedding and give your spouse an extra dose of appreciation. It is good to tell your children that you remember the day they were born, and you are glad that it happened. It is a very natural thing to do. For that matter, we do the same thing for catastrophes like the terror attacks on 9/11. On May 5th, in addition to having a few tacos for Cinco de Mayo, I will likely pause and remember the first anniversary of my father's death. When these dates roll around, we pause, reflect, and remember.

Can you imagine the significance of the first anniversary of Jesus' death and resurrection? The Jewish celebration of Passover would have come around again, and someone surely said, "Wow, has it been a year already?" The Apostles would have spent a little time sharing stories of that incredible weekend and all the things that had changed since. "Where did you go that night?" "Do you remember the way he looked at us?" "I can still hear the hammer hitting the nails." Conversations like that would have been natural, and it would have certainly bled over into that Sunday's worship.

The New Testament does not lay out a pattern for keeping specific holy days, but Scripture states that it is perfectly acceptable to observe special days. "The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord" (Romans 14:6). Paul, in particular, tried his best "to be at Jerusalem, if possible, on the day of Pentecost" (Acts 20:16), and it seems likely that he observed Passover there as well whenever he could, just like Jesus himself had done. While there was no formal creation of an Easter holiday at that time, it did not take long for tradition to focus on the story of Jesus each year at the time of the Passover.

Paul writes, "For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:8). The old holy day was quickly taking on new meaning.

I have heard it said that Easter was invented much later at the Council of Nicaea or some such thing, but this is false. You can read the oldest recorded Easter sermon online, titled "On the Passover." It was preached by a man named Melito between 160 and 170 AD, about 160 years before the Council of Nicaea. What was decided at Nicaea in 325 AD was not whether or not to celebrate the feast (they already were) but what day it would be on each year in the Roman Empire.

The churches in Asia Minor were celebrating their feast on the day of the Jewish Passover on the 14th day of the month of Nisan, but that day is based on the Jewish lunar calendar, so it can fall on any day of the week. In 30 AD, the Passover fell on a Friday, and the day of the Resurrection was three days later on a Sunday. In 2026, the Passover falls on Wednesday, April 1. It felt weird to a lot of folks to celebrate the Resurrection on a Wednesday when Christians normally worshipped on Sundays because that was the day of the Resurrection!

To keep the Christian celebration on Sunday, the standard date was adjusted. Today, Easter is always on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the Spring equinox, regardless of when the Passover falls. Worse - and this gets truly nerdy - Catholics and Protestants follow the Gregorian calendar introduced in 1582, whereas the Eastern Orthodox churches follow the older Julian calendar, which is different by 13 days at this point, resulting in different calculations for Easter. I just look at my Christ Prison Ministry calendar and hope Stephen Wolf got it right.

But isn't Easter pagan? If you mean the celebration of Jesus around the time of the Passover, then no, it is not. If you mean the word "Easter," then the answer is still only "maybe." That word did not find its way into the conversation until much later. The Anglo-Saxons had a Spring month called "Ēosturmōnaþ," which appears to have been named after a pagan goddess named "Eostre." The fact is, we really don't know if that word became associated with the Christian feast because of the name of the month or the name of the goddess. There is only one ancient historian who claims to know. An eighth-century scholar known to us as Venerable Bede claims that when the Anglo-Saxons converted, they attached their pagan festival name to the Passover/Resurrection festival of the Christians that took place at the same time. At most, we stole a name from the pagans, but we do that all the time. The pagans had cool names. The other common claim that the name comes from the Babylonian goddess Ishtar is just ridiculous. Ishtar sounds like Eostre, so people guessed a connection, but the words don't even come from the same language or language family. There is zero evidence connecting anything Easter-related to the Babylonians.

Okay, but what about the bunny and the eggs? Well, that part is admittedly a little weird, but still not likely pagan. In some parts of Europe, eggs were forbidden during Lent, so it became common in the medieval period to serve fancy eggs on the end of Lent, the day of Easter. The rabbits are the most recent addition. Blame the Germans for that. The earliest example of the Easter Bunny comes from 17th-century Germany, where parents told their kids that the Easter hare (Osterhase) hides the eggs. There is no historical evidence connecting either the eggs or the rabbits to paganism.

Where does all that leave us? Jesus is risen from the dead. It should never be far from our minds, and any chance we get to celebrate it more, we should take it! The customs that attach themselves to modern Easter are just opportunities to be joyful about the best thing that ever happened.

So enjoy your Peeps, for He is Risen!

Dr. Benjamin Williams is the Senior Minister at the Edgemere Church of Christ in Wichita Falls, TX and a regular writer at So We Speak. Check out his books The Faith of John’s Gospel and Why We Stayed or follow him on Twitter, @Benpreachin.