Easter with its concept of a risen man and a mother of god caring for him was born in great antiquity several thousand years before the birth of Christ. Fertility rites with bunnies and eggs, the early morning “Easter” sunrise service while looking to the east are all practices much older than Christianity. The celebration of Easter is a practice handed down and absorbed from ancient pagan religions by the Western “Christian” church of the second and through the forth centuries. Ancient “goddess’s of Sumeria, Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome and others portraying the mother of god with a risen son relationship were celebrated for most of 3,000 years BEFORE the birth of Christ. See the articles Astarte and Easter in The Oxford Companion to World Mythology by D. Lee Ming for further details. The date and time of these ancient pagan religious cultic observances were absorbed into the western church over several centuries in place of the Lord’s Passover service.
According to the 11th Ed. Of the Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 8 article on Easter, it is a “survival from the old Teutonic mythology”. It comes directly from ”Eostre, or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring” and was absorbed/grafted into the western church to satisfy the demands of newly converted peoples who brought their ancient religions with them into the church of Rome. It is clearly a celebration of ancient fertility rites in the vain of the ancient pagan cultic religious goddess’s of Osiris, Adonis, Inanna/Ishtar, Astarte and Asratu. Astarte… “is mentioned as El’s wife and ‘mother of the Gods’. “ Oxford Companion p. 35. “El” is an ancient name for God.
Easter was NOT celebrated by the early Christian church, it is not spoken of in the Bible nor written about by the early apostles and church fathers. The use of Easter was a “perpetuation of an old usage”. Over time it replaced the Christian Passover which Jesus had said on His last night of life to “do in remembrance of me.” See Luke 22:19. The first century Church of God kept God’s Holy Days and particularly the New Testament Passover as instituted on the last night of the life of Jesus (See Matt. 26, Luke 22, Mark 14, John 13;18;19, I Cor.5:7-8; I Cor. 11:17-34). The apostles kept Passover and NOT Easter. Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John not only continued to keep the Passover in the 2nd century but he went to Rome in 159 A.D. to urge Bishop Anicetus to discontinue Easter and return to keeping Passover on the 14th of the first month of the Hebrew calendar. 40 years later, Polycrates, the disciple of Polycarp, went to Rome to discuss the Easter/Passover observance controversy with now “Pope” Victor. Polycrates was excommunicated by Victor and the Church was ordered by Pope Victor to keep Easter on Sunday rather than keep the Passover on the 14th day of the first month as was the tradition of the Apostles of Jesus. In 325 A.D. Constantine ordered all in the Empire to keep Easter Sunday and not to keep the Passover on the 14th of the first month.
Easter the ancient pagan tradition of fertility worship honoring the goddess of love and fertility with its Mother of God worship had supplanted God’s Passover observance. God said not to do what the pagans did to worship their god’s. See Deut. 4:2, 13-14; 12:30-32; II Cor. 11:13-15; Gal. 1:6-8; 4:9-11; Col. 2:8. Christians are to obey God and keep His Holy Days and are not to observe what the pagans observe. Easter was grafted into Christianity from pagan worship to supplant/replace God’s true Passover service and it is a continuation of ancient pagan fertility rites. In the King James Version of the Bible, the Hebrew word for Passover in Acts 12:4 was purposely mistranslated as “Easter”. Easter was substituted for the word Passover. All other Bible translations correct this back to Passover.
