When I was a little girl, Easter was always a big deal in my family. I always got a new outfit ― dress, shoes, hat, purse, gloves, the whole nine yards. We celebrated the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus, but even as a young girl I couldn’t understand what colored eggs and bunnies had to do with Jesus. I continued that tradition into adulthood, but it wasn’t until a couple of years ago that I discovered what Easter was really all about ― and that’s when I stopped celebrating Easter and began properly terming it Resurrection Sunday.
Jerold Aust echoed my confusion in writing for the United Church of God, “Think about these facts for a minute. Easter is such a major religious holiday. Yet nowhere in the Bible — not in the book of Acts, which covers several decades of the history of the early Church, nor in any of the epistles of the New Testament, written over a span of 30 to 40 years after Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection — do we find the apostles or early Christians celebrating anything like Easter … If Easter doesn’t come from the Bible, and wasn’t practiced by the apostles and early Church, where did it come from?”
I first heard about the real organs of Easter from alternative commentators and hosts online, and let me tell you, I was SHOCKED and HORRIFIED at what I heard!
Aust will explain, “Easter isn’t a Christian or directly biblical term, but comes from a form of the name Astarte, a Chaldean (Babylonian) goddess known as “the queen of heaven.” (She is mentioned by that title in the Bible in Jeremiah 7:18 and Jeremiah 44:17-19; Jeremiah 44:25 and referred to in 1 Kings 11:5; 1 Kings 5:33 and 2 Kings 23:13 by the Hebrew form of her name, Ashtoreth. So “Easter” is found in the Bible — as part of the pagan religion God condemns) … And again, Easter was a pagan festival, originating in the worship of other gods, and was introduced much later into an apostate Christianity in a deliberate attempt to make such festivals acceptable. Moreover, Easter was very different from the Old Testament Passover or the Passover of the New Testament as understood and practiced by the early Church based on the teachings of Jesus Christ and the apostles.”
I found it interesting that Astarte ― also known as Ishtar (sounding similar to Easter) and Aphrodite ― was called “the queen of heaven” because when I was studying art history four years ago, my professor told us that the artists who painted depictions of the Mother Mary portrayed her in a royal light because they considered her to be the “queen of heaven.”
So, how did those colored eggs get into the celebration of Resurrection Sunday?
“In ancient Egypt and Persia, friends exchanged decorated eggs at the spring equinox, the beginning of their New Year. These eggs were a symbol of fertility for them because the coming forth of a live creature from an egg was so surprising to people of ancient times. Christians of the Near East adopted this tradition, and the Easter egg became a religious symbol. It represented the tomb from which Jesus came forth to new life,” wrote Greg Dues, in his book Catholic Customs and Traditions.
I’m well educated and all, but I don’t see the similarity between a bird being hatched from an egg and the miracle of Jesus being raised from the dead, ascending to heaven and promising to come back to earth without ever dying again. The bird will die. I can see the bird representing the birth of Christ but not his resurrection.
I couldn’t figure out what eggs had to do with rabbits either since chickens produce eggs, not bunnies. “Little children are usually told that the Easter eggs are brought by the Easter Bunny. Rabbits are part of pre-Christian fertility symbolism because of their reputation to reproduce rapidly,” Dues wrote in his book.
I’m sorry, but I’m not celebrating fertility on Resurrection Sunday. Let me be clear, the pagan celebration of fertility was not about wishing a married couple good luck in creating children together and building their family. It was all about orgies and having sex outside of marriage with all kinds of people and animals. Over the last couple of years, I have heard some researchers say that this goddess Astarte was actually a being with both male and female sex organs and would mate with anything. I don’t know how true that is, but I do know I’m not interested in celebrating anything remotely close to this on Resurrection Sunday.
If you’ve read any of my work over the past couple of years, you know that I am all about getting back to basics. And that’s one of the reasons I celebrate Resurrection Sunday and not Easter.
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