Easter - A Little Lesson in History

Deus, in adjutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina.
O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.

   Some comments on facebook compel me to present a little history lesson for those who have some odd ideas and misconceptions.

   First of all, the fertility goddesses come from various cultures, and Ishtar is not pronounced Easter. Easter is a different goddess from a different country. Here are some of those pagan ladies. Ashtoreth is from ancient Israel, Astarte from Greece, Demeter from Mycenae, Hathor from Egypt, Ishtar from Assyria, Kali from India and Ostara who is Norse. Now - the Saxons had Eostre (Eastre), and the Germans a similar spelling or Ostern. Eostre comes from an ancient word for "spring."  I had remembered some of this and simply found the information on a website called religioustolerance,org.  Sometimes it pays to research something before posting it.

   Christians did not take a pagan celebration of the equinox, or the fertility goddess, and turn it into a Holy Day for remembering the Resurrection. It happened to occur during the same season, spring. Constantine, by the way, had nothing to do with it. He did not make Rome christian. He was not a christian himself until close to death. He merely gave christians the right to practice their religion undisturbed. His mother, Helena, was a devout christian and is responsible for finding the true cross. That is another bit of history that might bear looking into. Freedom to worship for the christians didn't last long, since the return of persecutions with a vengeance happened later.

   Why is the christian "Easter" or "Resurrection" celebrated on various dates? Our Lord died and rose at the time of the Jewish Passover, and the Church has kept the Jewish method of reckoning, so far as Easter is concerned. Between the lunar year, which the Jews followed, and the solar year, there is a discrepancy of eleven days. That's why the date of Easter comes between March 22 and April 25. The Council of Nicaea decided that this was the way to set the date. It always comes on the Sunday following the full moon after the 21st of March.

   Our German ancestors that settled in Pennsylvania in the 1700s brought the Easter Bunny with them.   They had their spring celebrations, the rabbit being a symbol of fertility and the egg a symbol of new life. In Germany he was called osterhase (spring rabbit), an egg-laying rabbit.  There was a custom in Europe, more for Lent, it is thought from the 13th century when for penance meat and eggs were not eaten. People colored eggs to mark the end of the penitential season and ate them on Easter as part of their celebration.

   Thank you for your kind attention.