# Is Easter Heathen? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 13, 2020, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682 "2020-04-13T08:44:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Saintly\_Loser](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saintly_loser/32/4045_2.png) [@Saintly\_Loser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saintly_Loser)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/21 "2020-04-14T01:54:53Z")
> [@rsat3acr](#): > > Well the date of Easter isn’t correct either since it changes every year. No, it’s correct. It’s pegged to Passover, and the Jewish calendar that determines the date of Passover doesn’t really sync up with the Gregorian calendar. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/22 "2020-04-14T02:53:11Z")
> [@Sitnam](#): > > Yeah, Ostara, or Oestre. I remember a discussion about this a few years back here. I faintly remember someone calling Bede a liar, but never provided evidence Easters origins were solely a Christian idea. I don’t think it’s so much that Bede was a liar but that… I mean, what the hell did he have to go on? He was reporting history though snippets of oral history, rags of documents from here and there, and whatever else he could find. AT the time people literally didn’t know for sure what year it was. If he was accurate in any way it’s a testament to his dedicated. The man was assembling history without, really, any reliable evidence. It’s very much as if I asked you to write a book about the history of America from 1492 up to the Revolution, but you had no written resources of any kind and all you had to go on was what people remembered about it today. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/23 "2020-04-14T03:06:31Z")
> [@Saintly\_Loser](#): > > No, it’s correct. It’s pegged to Passover, and the Jewish calendar that determines the date of Passover doesn’t really sync up with the Gregorian calendar. Interestingly enough, it sort of does, thanks to the 19-year Metonic cycle. (The Gregorian calendar itself is supposed to approximate the tropical solar year.) ETA note btw that Christian churches have adopted their own formulae to determine the date of Easter, which does not necessarily agree with the Jewish Passover ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/24 "2020-04-14T08:03:55Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I don’t think it’s so much that Bede was a liar but that… I mean, what the hell did he have to go on? He was reporting history though snippets of oral history, rags of documents from here and there, and whatever else he could find. AT the time people literally didn’t know for sure what year it was. > > If he was accurate in any way it’s a testament to his dedicated. The man was assembling history without, really, any reliable evidence. It’s very much as if I asked you to write a book about the history of America from 1492 up to the Revolution, but you had no written resources of any kind and all you had to go on was what people remembered about it today. I think you are _seriously_ underestimating how much knowledge and how many written sources were available at the time. Bede was a highly learned man and widely read. See for example the [sources](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_History_of_the_English_People#Sources) for his Ecclesiastical History. Christian festivals and saints were commonly conflated with local festivals and gods throughout Europe, so it’s not surprising at all if the Christian Paschal festival got conflated with a Saxon festival. It’s also likely that most people in England still called the fourth month ‘Easter month’ in Bede’s time. After all, the name Easter has survived in English (and cognate words in German and Dutch) until today. It wasn’t invented by Bede, and he had no reason to do so. More information on Easter from the BBC History Magazine: [Easter eggs, Jesus Christ and the Easter bunny: the history and origins of Easter](https://www.historyextra.com/period/medieval/easter-history-facts-meaning-origin-jesus-eggs-bunny-church-celebrate/) ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 8:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/25 "2020-04-14T08:31:44Z")
But Easter was a well-established Christian festival long before any Saxons embraced Christianity. Even if we assume, for the sake of the argument, that Bede is correct about the name “Easter” coming from the name of a Saxon goddess, that just tells us why Saxons (and, subsequently, English-speakers) give the festival the name they do. It tells us nothing at all about the origins or meaning of the festival, which long predate the Saxon/English name. It’s also possible that, if the Saxons brought Oestre’s name to the festival, they brought other Saxon elements to the festival. But there’s no reason why this would have been of any interest to anyone who wasn’t Saxon. Why should Franks or Latins or Celts care at all about the views of some hairy men on the eastern fringes of the civilised world who had only just embraced Christianity? So, within the Saxon world the festival might have acquired not only a Saxon name but other Saxon elements, but this wouldn’t be of any relevance to mainstream Christianity outside that particular region. Trivial but relevant fact: I grew up in Ireland in the 1970s. We knew about the Easter bunny because we were exposed to UK media, but the Easter bunny, rabbits, etc played no role at all in our own Easter traditions and practices. Easter eggs were not delivered by the Easter bunny, for example. The reason for this is that Ireland was Christianised between the fourth and sixth centuries, and Easter (Cásca) was an established festival with its own traditions and practices long before the rabbit was introduced into Ireland by the Normans in the 11th century. Nine hundred years later, we still hadn’t embraced the Easter bunny. And there’s no reason to think that Saxon innovations had any more traction outside Saxon and Saxon-influenced societies than they had in Ireland. ---
**Author:** ![Falchion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Falchion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Falchion)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/26 "2020-04-14T17:34:38Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The Easter-Ishtar connection is an urban myth of very recent creation. It’s quite false - there is zero evidence to support it and it doesn’t make any sense linguistically. For what it’s worth, my understanding is that the idea came from the mid-1850s book “The Two Babylons: The Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and his Wife”. The title of which more or less summarizes the thesis. (Not that it matters, but I’m not entirely sure what is “proven” by demonstrating that the Catholic Church is the continuation of the ancient Babylonian religion). ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/27 "2020-04-14T20:43:16Z")
> [@Jim\_B](#): > > Christmas certainly is. Jesus’ disciples certainly never celebrated it. For early Christians, saintly personages’ death day was important. Celebrating someone’s birthday was, well, _pagan_. Sorry but it’s true. > > But Easter is a little different. It is named after the Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess Eostre. But some people also argue it may be based on the Jewish Passover. In fact it is called the Paschal feast. And Jesus is still called the Paschal Lamb. In fact Easter may be the only feast Jesus ordered us to keep (_…do this in memory of Me…_). > > … Easter is of course based on Passover, since Good Friday was Passover. The name “easter” is based upon the name “Eostre” . We have exactly one reference of “eostre”= wiki: _Ēostre is attested solely by Bede in his 8th-century work The Reckoning of Time, where Bede states that during Ēosturmōnaþ (the equivalent of April), pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in Ēostre’s honour, but that this tradition had died out by his time, replaced by the Christian Paschal month, a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus._ That is the exact sum total of all we know about Eostre, whoever she may be. We know exactly nothing about those feasts, nothing about eggs, bunnys or anything else. _All_ we know about eostre is in _one line_ in a 8th century book by the Bede. So, “Easter” was picked as the name for the Sunday ot Christ’s resurrection. Other than that name there is nothing pagan about Easter. Well… maybe. Just like with Christmas, many folk spring traditions became associated with Easter. And of course, some of those folk traditions may have roots in pagan ceremonies and practices. But we dont know which or anything more. Note that for nearly a millennium Easter was _the big_ Christian holiday, Christmas being just one more “Feast day” , celebrated by not having to fast, prayer, the lighting of candles and other joyous merrymaking. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/28 "2020-04-14T20:45:17Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > Probably because the Last Supper was a Passover seder. And the communion wafer bears a striking resemblance to matzo. I’ve been told they even taste the same (wouldn’t know personally, I’ve only had matzo). So whether or not it’s based on Passover or not there is certainly a connection there. No, not quite. It was the day before Passover, since Christ was crucified on Passover Friday. I have had both, they are somewhat similar. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/29 "2020-04-14T20:51:33Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > Hmmm… > > My understanding is that Ishtar, (pronounced Easter!) was the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex, (bunnies and eggs, anyone?) > After Constantine decided to Christianise the empire, ‘Easter’ was changed to represent Jesus. > > So they co opted a celebration of sex and fertility and changed ‘Ishstar’ to Easter. > > So NOT originally Christian, I’m thinking. No, sorry. By that time Ishtar had been long forgotten. Her worship fell out before the Romans. Possibly a few scholars might have known the name. True, some think that worship of Ishtar may have influenced the worship of Aphrodite. But by the time the early Christians were thinking of names etc, no one knew who the hell “Ishtar” was or had heard of her. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/30 "2020-04-14T20:55:19Z")
dup ---
**Author:** ![Ulfreida](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ulfreida/32/8014_2.png) [@Ulfreida](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ulfreida)\ **Post date:** [April 14, 2020, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/31 "2020-04-14T21:10:54Z")
> [@Saintly\_Loser](#): > > No, it’s correct. It’s pegged to Passover, and the Jewish calendar that determines the date of Passover doesn’t really sync up with the Gregorian calendar. Easter isn’t pegged to Passover. It is a lunar feast (the Sunday closest to the first full moon of Spring). It doesn’t have a fixed solar-year date, hence it is “moveable”. Passover is also a spring lunar feast, because the Jewish calendar is lunar-solar. That’s the reason they happen at approximately the same time. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2020, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/32 "2020-04-15T01:17:41Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > Easter isn’t pegged to Passover. It is a lunar feast (the Sunday closest to the first full moon of Spring). It doesn’t have a fixed solar-year date, hence it is “moveable”. Passover is also a spring lunar feast, because the Jewish calendar is lunar-solar. That’s the reason they happen at approximately the same time. This almost sounds as though the nearby dates of the feasts of Passover and Easter are purely coincidental. Aside from some religious bigotry, they are deliberately near each other. Christians celebrate the Last supper as though it was a celebration of Passover, (with some Christians arguing over what day Passover really was). Easter, (under that proposed reckoning), would be within a couple of days following Passover. Further, early Christians, feuding with Jews (and each other) developed different ways to reckon the date of Easter so that Easter and Passover are not celebrated on the same days–even Christians today (Eastern Orthodox and Western) calculate Easter’s date separately. ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2020, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/33 "2020-04-15T01:46:35Z")
The Greek and Latin name of the holiday we call Easter in English is Pascha, from the Hebrew Pesach - meaning Passover. So I think they may be pretty well linked. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2020, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/34 "2020-04-15T02:31:08Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > The name “easter” is based upon the name “Eostre” . We have exactly one reference of “eostre”= wiki: > _Ēostre is attested solely by Bede in his 8th-century work The Reckoning of Time, where Bede states that during Ēosturmōnaþ (the equivalent of April), pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in Ēostre’s honour, but that this tradition had died out by his time, replaced by the Christian Paschal month, a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus._ > > That is the exact sum total of all we know about Eostre, whoever she may be. We know exactly nothing about those feasts, nothing about eggs, bunnys or anything else. Again, assuming there was an “Eostre”. It could very well have been, quite literally, the name of the month and Bede was simply mistaken, or was mistaken in thinking that an actual person was a pagan Goddess. The specific reason this is something of scholarly issue is that, well, we have no other source for Eostre at all. That is highly suspicious for two reasons: First, we have a pretty good sources for Germanic deities; they are not generally obscure to us these days. We can document dozens of them by mention, as well as multiple contradictory tales about them. Yet we can’t place an Eostre anywhere. Second, Bede may have been a learned man but this was obviously not something he had many details upon. He was talking about something that happened in the past and we have no idea where he got the information. This doesn’t mean it’s _necessarily_ wrong, but it’s also not obviously right. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2020, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/35 "2020-04-15T04:27:36Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Again, assuming there was an “Eostre”. It could very well have been, quite literally, the name of the month and Bede was simply mistaken, or was mistaken in thinking that an actual person was a pagan Goddess. The specific reason this is something of scholarly issue is that, well, we have no other source for Eostre at all. That is highly suspicious for two reasons: First, we have a pretty good sources for Germanic deities; they are not generally obscure to us these days. We can document dozens of them by mention, as well as multiple contradictory tales about them. Yet we can’t place an Eostre anywhere…t. Well, yes, making that assumption. But even making that assumption, that is the sum total of what we know about Eostre. One line. We \*do \*have good sources? Because the Germans didnt write much down. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2020, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/36 "2020-04-15T08:42:28Z")
Let’s summarize the solid evidence: ✦ The Saxon name for the 4th month was Eosturmonath or Eastermonað - Easter-month - attested in the 8th century. ✦ The German name for the 4th month was Ostarmanoth - attested in many sources from the reign of Charlemagne, 8th century. ✦ The Christian festival was called Easter (or its cognates) in Germanic languages throughout northern Europe, also from the 8th century - and still is to this day. ✦ As a proper name: there was a person called Eosterwine (650-685 AD) which means “Eostre’s friend” - but whether Eostre refers to a goddess, a month, or a festival is not clear. ✦ The Saxon name for the 3rd month was Rhedmonath or Hreðmonað. ✦ Bede says that there was a goddess called Eostre whose festival was in Eosturmonath, and a goddess called Hretha whose festival was in Rhedmonath. ✦ Hundreds of altar stones with dedicatory inscriptions in Latin dating to about 200AD, were found in the Cologne area, then the Roman province of Germania Inferior, dedicated to godesses called ‘Matronae Austriahenae’ - the Austriahena Mothers. ✦ English (Saxon) missionaries were very active in converting the Germans to Christianity, and English scholars, especially Alcuin, who came from the same region as Bede, were prominent at Charlemagne’s court. It’s possible (likely?) that the name of the month and festival were brought to Germany from England. Anything else is speculation. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2020, 2:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/37 "2020-04-15T14:34:42Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > We \*do \*have good sources? Because the Germans didnt write much down. :dubious: Compared to most pagan religions, yes. German paganism was continually practiced for something like a thousand years after the introduction of Christianity into the Roman empire. We have substantial archeological evidence from that time, as well as various written sources. These include some German Pagan sources, though most were written by Christians, who of course may not have documented everything. But it would be very strange if a major deity were somehow completely missed, especially one with an entire month named after her and whose culture has multiple descendant cultures/languages today. That is, we can obviously see the impact of Germanic Paganism on the English or Germanic languages today just in the days of the week, but these are not great mysteries to us. I.E, Wednesday is descended from “Wotn’s Day” but no historian would be shocked by it. We have strong sources for dozens of Germanic deities - but not for “Eostr”. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2020, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/38 "2020-04-15T15:17:53Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > Let’s summarize the solid evidence: > > … > > ✦ The Christian festival was called Easter (or its cognates) in Germanic languages throughout northern Europe, also from the 8th century - and still is to this day. Which Germanic languages are you speaking of, other than English and German? From the wiki article on [Names of Easter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_Easter) > [@](#): > > In Dutch, Easter is known as Pasen and in the North Germanic languages Easter is known as påske (Danish and Norwegian), påsk (Swedish), páskar (Icelandic) and páskir (Faeroese). The name is derived directly from Hebrew Pesach.[18] The letter å is pronounced /oː/, derived from an older aa, and an alternate spelling is paaske or paask. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2020, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/39 "2020-04-15T18:05:58Z")
Yes, you’re right - only German dialects and English. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [April 15, 2020, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682/40 "2020-04-15T20:38:59Z")
_Eo_- means dawn from proto-Indo-European \*_ews_- as in Latin _Aurora_, Greek Ἠώς _Ēṓs_, Sanskrit उषास् _Uṣā́s_. The suffix -\*stre _is from an Indo-European root meaning ‘woman’, as in Sanskrit स्त्री [strī́](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E0%A4%B8%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%A4%E0%A5%8D%E0%A4%B0%E0%A5%80) ‘woman’_ and the Old English combining suffix -_ster_ meaning ‘woman’, as in \*brewster \*(it always used to be women brewing the beer). In \*seamstress \*it got another female suffix -_ess_ added because -\*ster \*was no longer productive or understood as a feminine agent suffix. \*Cite: _[An Indo-European Comparative Dictionary](https://books.google.com/books?id=u0wOAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22An+Indo-European+Comparative+Dictionary%22+1987&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj849zjoevoAhWGlnIEHWOVBCoQ6AEwAHoECAUQAQ)_ (1987), p. 1294. Ishtar is from a proto-Semitic goddess-name root, ‘ttr(t), as in Arabic عثترة ‘_Athtarah_, Akkadian _Ishtar_, Hebrew עַשְׁתֹּרֶת‎ ‘_Ashtoret_, to cite a few; it was hellenized as Ἀστάρτη \*Astártē \*in Greek. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-easter-heathen/851682.md?page=3)