Seems a bit thin. Is it true that the Venerable Bede connected the holiday to a goddess of spring, Eastre or Eostre? Is she another incarnation (or name) for Ishtar? If so, then fertility is the name and bunnies and eggs is her game.
Is this another case of the pagans winning and the Christians trying to fit in? Christmas trees at Yule and all that.
I’d try to figure this all out myself, but hey! What would be the point of carrying coals to Newcastle?
Link to Column: What’s the connection between Easter and rabbits? - The Straight Dope
fredricwilliams: For future ref, when you start a thread, it’s helpful to other readers if you provide a link to the column you’re talking about. Saves searching time, and avoids some duplication. No biggie, you’ll know for next time.
Eostre is only attested to by Bede. For unclear reasons, the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity was rapid and complete, and, as long as they remained pagans, they were almost totally illiterate, so that we have very little knowledge of Anglo-Saxon religion apart from vague mentions like this and what we can project from common Germanic religion. Just about everything we know about Woden and Thunor is what we know from Odin and Thor, and from Wotan and Donner. In the case of Eostre, we know even less. On general linguistic grounds, she may be related to Aurora. But there is no likely connection with Ishtar, who, if she has any connection to the Anglo-Saxon pantheon at all, would correspond to Fríge. There isn’t even much connection between Eostre and Easter itself—it seems that April was named “Eostre-month” in pagan days, and that is all there is to it.
If we know so little about Eostre, how do we know Ishtar is more likely to correspond to Frige?
Powers &8^]
Because Fríge is a major goddess corresponding to Venus and Aphrodite, while Eostre is a minor goddess corresponding to Aurora and Eos. There’s even a good chance that “Eostre” is cognate with “Aurora” and “Eos”, all deriving from PIE *Hausos. And, while Ishtar is not Indo-European, she was generally associated with Venus.
Fríge, Venus, Aphrodite, and Ishtar are all associated with the planet Venus, which is why the sixth day of the week is named “Friday”.