No, Easter is Not A Pagan Goddess
Easter is a celebration of the resurrection of Christ. Every year, at Easter time, I see the same tired attempts to recast Easter as a pagan holiday. Those attempts are poorly researched and rely on material that lacks provenance, has been wildly embellished and does not take into account the actual resurrection story. Below is a quick primer on Easter followed by the modern mythology built around claims of pagan roots.
The Resurrection
The entire Christian faith stems from this central tenet. Jesus Christ was the Son of God. His death and resurrection are the redemption from sin that allows humanity forgiveness of sins, communion with God, salvation and eternal life. The timing of the Resurrection was no coincidence. The events of the crucifixion and resurrection overlapped with Passover. It was symbolic. This sacrifice was the ultimate sacrifice. At that time, all Christians were Jews. Passover became the celebration of Jesus Resurrection and was celebrated by the early church on the fourteenth of Nissan.
Polycarp, a disciple of John the Apostle, visited Rome while Anicetus was Bishop. This would have been between 68 and 153 AD. In Historia Ecclesiastica, Book V, Section 24, Polycarp expressed that the “Passover” was being celebrated in Asia Minor on the “day when people put away the leaven.” In Rome, the celebration was on the Sunday after. Polycarp and Anicetus could not reach an accord on establishing the date for the celebration, but left the status quo, departing on good terms.
A few decades later, the church was still celebrating the resurrection on different days. Around 195, Victor, the Bishop of Rome had less patience with Polycarp’s insistence that the celebration should be held on the fourteenth of Nissan, tracking the Jewish holiday of Passover. The situation was again left unsettled.
After the Nicene Council of 325, Constantine I issued a decree (enforceable) that the entire church should worship Easter on the same day. Aside from the argument that the celebration should be held on a Sunday, the day the church agreed the resurrection happened, Constantine went a step further and moved the date to the Roman calendar. Constantine argued that Easter should not be celebrated twice in the same year and settled on the Roman calendar for determining the date.
Essential here is Constantine’s use of the word Easter.
Modern Mythology
The modern mythology associated with Easter is that the celebration is rooted in the Celtic goddess Eostre and her magic bunny. In order to support this claim, the authors of the mythology all quote the same source material. Ultimately, it begins with a monk named Bede. In the eighth century, Bede wrote that the Anglo-Saxon months correspond with the moons. He proceeds to name the months and then points out that two of them were named for goddesses. Specifically, Hretha and Eostre. He claims that feasts were held in honor of Eostre during her month. He opines that they designate the “paschal season” by her name. First of all, no mention of eggs or rabbits. That comes later. But where does credibility lie? Wouldn’t it make sense that the most accurate opinion on this matter would be the one most closely associated with the name change? As pointed out above, the name was changed to Easter sometime around the time of Constantine I, as he used the term in June of 325.
Bede
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That brings me to another ancient Christian. One whose title was actually Church Historian. Not just some guy writing about things with presumptions of their origins. I am speaking of Eusebius. Eusebius was writing about Easter centuries before Bede was even born. As described above, there was a serious conflict within the church regarding when to celebrate the resurrection. In Eusebius discussion of the debate chronicled in the book Ecclesiastical History, we are provided a footnote on where the term Easter came from and why the church prefers the term.
Eusebius
Source
Above is the footnote of Eusebius’ discussion on the timing of Easter. It had nothing to do with the naming of the holiday. Here, we read that Easter is derived from the Saxon word Ostern or auferstehn, meaning resurrection. This is not a minor point. If a Saxon goddess existed, it would not seem unlikely that her name would be a cognate form of resurrection as spring is often associated with rebirth. With all the fertility notions that go along with it. But we have a chicken and egg type situation here. In the very era that the term Easter was adopted by the church, a church historian is tying the meaning to another Saxon word that simply means resurrection, with no need for goddesses or names of months. The revisionist version is tenuous at best, when a contemporary provides a much cleaner explanation that makes sense.
Jacob Grimm of Grimm Fairy Tale lore
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Doubling Down on Bede
Centuries later, Jacob Grimm posited the notion of bunnies in relation to Easter. Ironically, this is the same Jacob Grimm famous for his fairytales. He was a folklorist. In the ten centuries between Bede and Grimm, there is no evidence this goddess ever existed or that she had a bunny rabbit. The rabbit mythology, proposed by Grimm, was repeated by several other authors and promulgated more recently in the modern era. Essentially, the oldest connection between a goddess named Eostre and bunnies is the eighteenth century. Hardly a provenance worth touting.
There has been some other scholarly work done in an attempt to solidify the existence of a goddess named Eostre. This appears to rely primarily on place names. However, we should keep in mind root words. If the word for resurrection has a cognate that means spring or something close to it, then it would make sense that both root words would result in place names. Potentially. But assuming there ever was a goddess named Eostre, it is clear that the church was using the name based on the meaning of the root word and not the worship of a goddess. Nevertheless adoption of rituals that have no known connection to goddess in question.
Easter Eggs
We have established that there is no provenance tying a goddess named Eostre to eggs. But what do we know about the egg tradition? We know that Christians in Europe gave up eggs during lent and celebrated with eggs on Easter, following the self-denial. But that only dates back about 500 years.
However, the book Roman Rituals from 1610 is a collection of church rituals that are based on texts that are much older. According to this book, which predates the Grimm fallacy, early Christians celebrated Easter by coloring eggs red. The egg is a symbol of rebirth and the decoration of eggs dates back eons. It could certainly be suggested that Christians borrowed the practice from other religions. But these early Christians were from Mesopotamia, nowhere near some goddess named Eostre. But I would argue that the mere fact that something was done by a pagan religion does not mean that similarities in that practice have anything to do with each other. If eggs are a symbol of rebirth, it would make sense that early Christians would incorporate them into a resurrection celebration.
Rabbits
I can’t find rabbits anywhere in early Christian worship. At all. The first appearance of the rabbit appears to be Grimms Easter fairytale.
Monday Night Football
To emphasize my point about the use of root words, I will use a silly example. But it is to drive home the point that a root word used contextually (like resurrection). The word Monday is a latinized version of the old English word Monandaeg, which translates as Day of the Moon. Monday Night Football is played on Mondays as a form of worship to the Moon Goddess. The game is always played in the evening, and the sport itself is always played during the Winter months when the moon spends the greatest amount of time in the sky. Football is a celebration of the Moon Goddess. This is further proven by the ring that plays an integral part of the story of Elatha, the moon goddess. It remains an important part of the NFL festival of the moon games as the winning teams are presented with rings in honor of the moon goddess.
I could think of a hundred other examples just as ridiculous as this. Merely sharing a name or a season does not imply any direct relationship between the celebration or event in question and any other celebration or event that has a specific history or correlation to the root word. And in the case of Eostre, the very existence of the goddess is in question, making any claims tenuous at best.
Concession
I will concede that there are Christian holidays that have co-opted pagan practices. That does not mean that any of those holidays are, themselves, pagan. The reason we do things today has little connection to the reason why someone else may have done something similar in the past. Even if there is a direct provenance between the practice. But with Easter, the pagan connection is a fallacy. The essence of Easter is the essence of Christianity. It is the central tenet of Christianity. Resurrection. The fact that the Saxon word for resurrection was later adopted by elements of the church, particularly in Europe and the United States, has nothing to do with paganism. The holiday is rooted in the Resurrection, which corresponds to the Jewish celebration of Passover. Most of the church has maintained variations of the Jewish word Pesach, which the Christian celebration was once closely aligned with. The celebrations attributed to the alleged goddess called Eostre are fabrications from the eighteenth century. The complete lack of provenance to those stories make them wholly unreliable. Particularly when we have evidence from the early church explaining the origins of the terminology.
I hope you enjoyed reading this and I hope it clears up the fake news about about Easter. Have a blessed holiday!