Easter is around the corner, and for most people it is a period of family togetherness or it could mean another public holiday. For others, it is a means of ending their self-imposed challenge of Lent.

You probably have been celebrating Easter of a lot of years and you never cared to ask, why is it called Easter? Why does the date change constantly? And many other questions you never cared to ask.

Read on to find out the answers to some of these lingering questions.
1.A movable Feast

Easter, unlike Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Independence Day and most other holidays it is not on a fixed date. And here’s why:

Easter is usually celebrated on the first Sunday after the spring equinox. In case you skipped geography class. An equinox is one of the two times in the year (around 20 March and 22 September) when the sun is above the equator and day and night are of equal length.

And why was this date chosen?

It was a way to steal the thunder from another popular god, whose cult was Christianity’s biggest rival. The worship of Attis and Cybele was very popular in Rome as late as the 3rd century. Attis was a soter, or savior, god who was reborn each year. This resurrection was celebrated beginning on the Friday after the full moon after the Vernal equinox (now Good Friday). It culminated on the following Sunday -three days later. Since they were rivals, Christianity adopted the date for their soter and, once the Cybele cult faded, Christians had to keep the date since that was when everybody was used to celebrating the holiday.

Speaking about pagan gods….
2.Easter is named after a pagan goddess.

The early Christians called their celebration Paschal, from the Hebrew word for the Passover feast, pesach.

However, plenty of people were already celebrating a feast in the month of April called Eostur-monath, which means, literally, “month of Eostur.” Eostur, also spelled Eostre or Ostara, was the Anglo-Saxon goddess of fertility.

Early in the history of Christianity, many pagan observances were adapted for the new faith. The early missionaries discovered that it was easier to get converts to celebrate a new name than it was a new date.
3.Good Friday

Good Friday is the day Jesus died on the cross. Ever wondered why it is called “Good Friday” when actually it is marking a pretty bad incident.

“Good Friday” is called “good” because the original translation from Latin meant “pious, holy or good”. It seem historians chose “good”, although in many parts of the world the day is still referred to as Holy Friday.

So it is good to know that if you call it Pious Friday you would not be wrong after all.
4.Easter is the earliest Christian festival

Christmas might be the most popular Christian festival, but Easter is definitely the oldest.

The first Easter was celebrated in Babylon, 4400 years ago, around 2400 BC. The first Christian Easter was celebrated in 325 A.D, while the first recorded date of Christmas was celebrated on December 25th was in 336AD.

Easter, the preeminent feast that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, is clearly the earliest Christian festival.
5.Other similar stories

As mentioned earlier, Easter has both its name and date from pagan religions. Most of the Easters’ traditions which include coloring hard-boiled eggs, giving baskets of candy, Easter Bunny, Easter parade (which are not so popular in Nigeria) also have pagan origins. That is not all, it gets better.

There were several soter gods who were very similar to Jesus in pre-Christian cultures. Attis (as mentioned previously), Adonis, Tammuz, Dammuzi, Dionysos, Marduk, Amun and many others have a mythology that parallels that of Jesus. Now, some Christians will use the convenient “satan did it to confuse us” to explain these away. But many others are interested to learn about this phenomenon. Being born of a Virgin, hanging “between earth and sky,” dying and arising again after 3 days… these and other details occur in all stories of a savior god. The book, Pagan Christs by by John M. Robertson will fascinate anyone interested in delving deeper or better still Google.

So, there are some interesting facts about Easter. Yes, the holiday has its roots in pagan traditions, but that shouldn’t make any difference. The early Christians definitely had good intentions for integrating pagan traditions into Christianity.

Now that GiftedGreen has filled your heads with Easter facts, go and have a happy Easter!

I wish u d same. I pray that d death & d resurrection of Christ over us shall not be in vain in Jesus name.

amen.

nice to know this after celebrating easter for many years