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At the very least, we can celebrate Spring, and for living in a country where we are free to worship whatever god we choose, or none at all (for however much longer that lasts).

Is Easter tied to any pagan holidays? I know that Christmas is but does any one know about Easter?

Betsy,

Happy Spring Time to you!

I've been told it used to be a holiday celebrating fertility, hence the bunnies and the eggs.... no kidding -

JamesH wrote:Is Easter tied to any pagan holidays? I know that Christmas is but does any one know about Easter?

DAR
Easter is totally pagan, top to bottom. Perhaps even more blatantly so than Christmas and that's hard to do.

Excerpt:

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Origins of the name "Easter":

The name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess and God. The Venerable Bede, (672-735 CE.) a Christian scholar, first asserted in his book De Ratione Temporum that Easter was named after Eostre (a.k.a. Eastre). She was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxon people in Northern Europe. Similarly, the "Teutonic dawn goddess of fertility [was] known variously as Ostare, Ostara, Ostern, Eostra, Eostre, Eostur, Eastra, Eastur, Austron and Ausos." 1 Her name was derived from the ancient word for spring: "eastre." Similar Goddesses were known by other names in ancient cultures around the Mediterranean, and were celebrated in the springtime. Some were:

--Aphrodite from ancient Cyprus
--Ashtoreth from ancient Israel
--Astarté from ancient Greece
--Demeter from Mycenae
--Hathor from ancient Egypt
--Ishtar from Assyria
--Kali, from India
--Ostara a Norse Goddess of fertility.

An alternative explanation has been suggested. The name given by the Frankish church to Jesus' resurrection festival included the Latin word "alba" which means "white." (This was a reference to the white robes that were worn during the festival.) "Alba" also has a second meaning: "sunrise." When the name of the festival was translated into German, the "sunrise" meaning was selected in error. This became "ostern" in German. Ostern has been proposed as the origin of the word "Easter".

***

See the rest:

http://www.religioustolerance.org/easter1.htm

The name very truly comes from the Nordic/Germanic goddess of sunrise and how it became the name of the only supposedly truly Christian holy day is pure politics. Somewhere around the 6-7th century CE, the successful western branches of Christianity were the Roman church and the Irish church. The Irish church started the Monestary system (Abbot from Abbas or father), and were very literate. Most Irish monks read and wrote latin, hebrew, and greek (and created the celtic alphabet - prior to christianity the celts were deliberately non-literate) - it was Irish monks that perserved the prechristian knowledge (Aristotle, etc) that the Roman church was destroying (prechristian = unchristian = antichrisitan = evil). The Irish weren't vying for power, but their message was one that appealed to a large chunk of christianity, so Rome saw them as a threat. In psuedo-conversion of the Saxon English, the Romans brought the English into the Roman fold by renaming the "pascal mystery" as Easter. The Romans, needing to blame the Jews for Jesus death, since obviously (for them to gain power) it couldn't be the Romans' fault, disassociated Easter from the jewish passover celebration, which is how we get a holy day that is dated the 1st Sunday following the 1st full moon following the Spring equinox. (The Irish church held that the "pascal mystery" should be observed on the 2nd Sunday of passover - being when the original event had occurred.)

Darrel,

That makes sense that it would be tied to fertility or planting in the spring.

If I remember my Asian history correctly they made a big deal out of planting the rice in the spring. The main thing I remember that many times only the women could plant the rice because of fertility. It didn't have anything to do with the fact that the water is cold when they plant the rice in early spring!