Today is Easter: How the season’s ‘possibility of hope’ evolved from ancient Jewish and pagan traditions

Jesus Christ’s resurrection isn’t just central to the Christian liturgical calendar.

“It’s the central mystery of our faith,” Bob Feeny, pastor at Westminster United Church, said. “That Jesus Christ rose from the dead and that life beyond what we believe is possible in God.”

For Lent, Feeny gave up alcohol, and he’s been sharing his 40-day journey through Instagram posts.

“For me, I always reflect on what it means to be reborn, made new,” Feeny said. “It’s no coincidence that Easter lines up with spring in the Northern Hemisphere, and spring is this time of rebirth and fecundity and growth and all this stuff.”

The connection between Christ’s resurrection and the rebirth of spring is a common one people make as they eagerly await warmer days, said Sarah Porter, a professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University. Because of this, and other reasons, the holiday is sometimes thought to be connected to ancient pagan holidays with similar themes.

You may have heard of Christmas’ connection to the Roman Sol Invictus or All Saints’ Day’s connection to Samhain, or Halloween, for instance. Some of those are genuine links, Porter said.

Easter also carries some pagan origins but is more closely related to the Jewish holiday of Passover than anything else, said Porter, who joined Gonzaga in August. Porter, who earned her Ph.D. in religion from Harvard in May, is a historian of Christian literature and culture from between the second and fifth centuries.

“There’s a really tidy answer from where the name comes from: People who speak English call it Easter but what the name originally was in Latin and Greek is Pascha,” Porter said. “That’s really just a translation into the Hebrew word for Passover. From the beginning and even until now, Greek Orthodox call it Pascha.”

Easter, as it’s commonly understood in the United States, is linked to the Jewish lunar calendar because Christ’s resurrection is said to have occurred during Passover, Porter said.

The name “Easter” derives from a pre-Christian, Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility named Eostre, of whom little is known.

As explained by Boston University religion scholar Andrew M. Henry, the only mention of this pagan goddess in any text comes from the English monk St Bede the Venerable in his modestly titled eighth-century book “On the Reckoning of Time.”

Bede wrote the following:

“Eostre-month has a name which is now translated ‘Paschal month,’ and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month. Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance.”

According to Henry, the origins of Eostre are hard to place. Historians have debated whether her name refers to the “eastern” direction, the spring equinox, dawn or Bede simply invented her, Henry says on his YouTube channel ReligionforBreakfast.

“One of his big things he wants to prove is when you should be celebrating the resurrection of Jesus,” Porter said of Bede’s “Reckoning.”

Bede ultimately approximated that the resurrection should be celebrated in the Anglo-Saxon month Eosturmonath, or the month of the goddess Eostre, Porter said.

“Because the English language goes viral over the next couple thousand years,” she said, “the name Easter also goes viral.”

The Easter celebration in early Christianity would have also looked much different from the jelly beans, brightly colored eggs and wicker baskets that make up the popular commercial image in the U.S. today. (The rabbits and eggs wouldn’t come up until the medieval period.) Many churches still maintain some of the ancient Christian rites, Porter said.

Early Christians could only join the faith after a 40-day period of fasting, (“it’s not called lent,” Porter said) followed by a midnight Easter vigil where the already-baptized are waiting to welcome the “newbies,” Porter said.

“That was the night you were going to be baptized,” she said. “Everybody is holding candles and they’re surrounding the baptismal font. That’s when you’re allowed to take the Eucharist for the first time. It’s a really visceral, sensory experience.”

In the 330s, an Egyptian bishop recommended that this period of preparation last 40 days. By the 13th century, this stretch was called “Lent,” from a Middle English word for springtime. Greek speakers called it Tessarakosti (Greek for 40th), and in Latin, it was known as Quadragesima (Latin for 40th).

For the people of the ancient world, the celebration felt like the culmination of the entire year, she said.

“It’s almost like joining a fraternity,” she said. “One night a year, and finally you’re in and there’s a ritual. Early Christianity was very Roman.”

Porter believes one of the reasons Easter is often associated with pagan traditions is because of an “implicit anti-Semitism” present throughout much of Christian history.

“It moves the genealogy away from Passover to sort of de-center how integral Jewish people are to the Christian tradition,” she said. “In the medieval period, (Easter) was a very violent time for the Jewish people.”

However, the similarity between the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the natural rebirth of spring are commonly tied together by believers, Porter said.

“I think there are meaningful connections people make between the end of winter and spring coming and Jesus’s resurrection, and those are connections we make,” she said. “The meaning it takes on and the celebrations that surround it, and maybe the reason we are so eager to take on this Christian holiday Easter, is that we all want spring. We all want to celebrate it.”

Feeny said there shouldn’t be any surprise about the connections between the ever-changing natural world and the spiritual world.

“Ultimately, all religion and all human experience goes back to an immediate experience with land,” Feeny said. “Every culture is going to have festivals and traditions that line up with the seasons.”

At Westminster United Church, Feeny said he intends to discuss letting go of attachments during his Easter sermon.

“Even the resurrected Jesus is saying don’t get attached to (me) because something even more is happening,” he said. “Whenever we think we’ve arrived at the answer, there is still something that pulls us beyond that. It’s the possibility of hope. It’s everything in Christian faith.”