Dear Christian Friends:
Christ Is Risen! Are you excited to start hearing that? Me too! How exciting it is as we move into the month where we will celebrate Christ’s victory over death and His resurrection, where He showed without a doubt that He truly is the Son of God. Still, there are a lot of different rumors floating around about how this holiday got its origin, and whether or not a “good Christian” can celebrate a holiday named after an “Anglo-Saxon goddess”. If you have never heard of these rumors, consider yourselves lucky. If you have and they have left you thinking “why does the church celebrate Easter? Did we re-appropriate an ancient pagan tradition for our own purposes?” I hope to help you navigate these questions in this article.
I would like to start by dispelling a rumor that Easter is just the Roman Catholic church’s way of taking a pagan holiday named after the celebration of the Goddess of Spring named Ishtar and reforming it into a church celebration. You must understand that those who make this claim do so based on an assumption that does not have definitive evidence. People can be bold in making any statement they want when they are talking about “what if’s” that cannot be proven false. What I mean by this is: they cannot prove this theory any more than you can disprove it. However, even if the modern name of the holiday comes from a pagan tradition and even if secular traditions surrounding the holiday also come from that, Resurrection Day was celebrated long before it was assigned the name “easter” and egg hunts were started. The celebration of Christ resurrection is, in fact, the oldest known church tradition, far exceeding the establishment of the papacy or even Emperor Constantine’s legalization of Christianity. We have records from the Second Century… 100’s A.D. showing definitively that churches had already set aside one day out of the year to celebrate the resurrection, long before “easter” was designated to be the name of the celebration.
Another awesome thing to know about the celebration of Christ’s resurrection is that it is likely the reason we now worship on a Sunday rather than a Saturday (the traditional Jewish Sabbath). This celebration was done on the “eight day” according to second century documents, and was considered to be the “Lord’s Day” as it was the day we celebrate His resurrection. Contrast this to the Christmas celebration, which there is no documented evidence for prior to the 4th century A.D. What does this mean for us? When we celebrate easter we join with Christians from the earliest churches in acknowledging the resurrection of Christ to be the greatest event in all of human history!
If you are tired of the commercialization of Easter and seeing all the bunnies and eggs around, that is perfectly understandable. I also understand if you prefer to refer to it as “Resurrection Day” rather than “Easter.” We certainly like to strip holidays of Christ in our modern culture, and that can be frustrating for those of us who know what the holiday is really about. Still, be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Rather than allowing Easter to be a time when you find yourself upset, perhaps you can use the cultural traditions around easter as a means of sharing the Gospel of Christ with those you wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach!
Regardless of what you choose to call it, or what traditions you choose to embrace during this season, my prayer is that you do not allow exterior factors to steal your joy at the celebration of what Christ has done for us. This is an excellent time where our voices join with all Christians who compose the Body of Christ past, present, and future, in triumphantly proclaiming He Is Risen Indeed, Hallelujah!
In the love of Christ, Vicar Simmons