If I were to tell you that Easter is not a pagan holiday I'll bet that some of you would insist I was wrong. For some reason American's embrace the fact that Christian holidays are actually pagan holidays cloaked in Christian religious myths. I don't personally support that notion, but you can be sure that every holiday that is celebrated by folks who refer to themselves as Christian has some group insisting that the roots of the holiday are actually pagan.
I'd imagine we associate our behavior with pagan behavior more now than folks ever did throughout history! If I refer to Easter as Easter someone is bound to tell me that I'm really talking about a holiday named for the Goddess Oestre, or Ishtar! If I mention the "Easter Bunny" someone is going to tell me it is a fertility symbol and I should be ashamed to associate that symbolism with Christianity. If I talk about eggs I'll get told that their decoration and veneration dates back to the Romans. If I mention "Easter Sunday" or a "Sun Rise Service" I'll be reminded that the Egyptians worshipped the Sun and Moon and that other cultic traditions celebrated those lights in the skies and ultimately I'm celebrating in a pagan way.
Okay, this isn't going to be a professional rebuttal because I haven't thought it through completely and I'm no scholar. I do know that just because someone celebrates something sort of like I do, that doesn't mean I'm celebrating what they are! If I light candles on my birthday cake I'm not reminded of the Jewish Holiday of Lights! If I fly a kite I'm not thinking about Tibetan prayer flags. Sometimes we do things that are mirrored in other cultures traditions but we do them for our own purposes! If I shoot off firecrackers I'm not remembering the Chinese New Year!
So why would Christians use some of the traditions they do? For example why do they give each other hard boiled eggs for Easter? Well, you know about Mardi Gras right? It is a celebration in which folks throw all caution to the wind and eat all the fat and milk and eggs they had in their kitchens because Lent was a season of abstinence. So people used the fat and the eggs and the milk and they made pancakes, or doughnuts, or they had parties. During the Medieval period eggs were something you were to abstain from along with dairy and meat. So what did you do with eggs? Well, you could preserve them! And you could wait till you were allowed to eat them again. And when you were allowed to eat them again- when celebrating the Resurrection of Christ you might have handed them out as gifts!
Now what about the day of Easter. It isn't a particular date! It doesn't actually have anything to do with the day Jesus supposedly rose from the dead. Well, you make a good point! But perhaps you aren't aware that since Christianity's namesake was a practicing Jew, his traditions led him to follow a faith that honored the passing of time by the lunar calendar and by the sun! There is a story about the beginning of life in the book of Genesis that says God created the sun and the moon on the fourth day and there was a belief that every 28 years the rotation of the sun and the moon brought their positions back to where they were when God created the Earth. Would you say that the Jews worshiped the sun? I guess you could, but no Jew would agree with you.
Just because things remind us of other things doesn't mean that they are the other thing! I mean, I could tell you that some Christians eat ham on Easter just to annoy Muslims and Jews. But just because I say it and just because I could lay out a patchwork argument doesn't mean that it's true! Personally I'm having a problem with April Fool's day because if Christians who probably took this celebration from the "Feast of Fools" or from "New Years" were involved throughout the middle ages, then I can't figure out why they'd be playing with fish prior to or around Easter week!
The point is that some holidays have picked up some festivities from groups that originally had nothing to do with the holiday, but holidays in themselves have meaning! If we wash out the meaning from each holiday we celebrate by saying oh, this is just a pagan tradition...or this was a celtic tradition, or this was an Egyptian practice...then we aren't concentrating on the holiday!
Can we celebrate Easter even though there is no Easter celebration in the New Testament? Well, can we have a wedding in Christian churches? We know that there was a wedding at Cana, but we don't know who performed the ceremony! Most likely it was performed by a Jewish leader. Should all Christian weddings be overseen by Jewish Rabbis? Do you think there was a lot of ham eating in the bible? Do you think they used Viking Gods names for the days of the week? Did they think that their cereal was named for the mother of Prosperpina? Did they worry about cloth being named for Clotho?
Easter is a holiday celebrated by Christians to commemorate the Rising of the Son of God, who was not created by God but who was of the same substance. If you want to eat an egg and suck on a chocolate rabbit while celebrating a mystery that has had profound impact on the history of man- then go for it! But don't tell me it has anything to do with pagan culture!
love,
mo
Tomorrow or the next day I hope to have a famous pagan refuting this post...at least we will if I find one! :)
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Denna Kastner // 
