What Components Went Into Making The Story Of Easter A Fascinating Subject

Easter the history is a combination of religious traditions, pagan and secular celebrations, and language.

Easter the history includes the etymology of the word Easter which goes back to the Greek Pascha, meaning Passover, the Hebrew holiday. Easter and Passover both stand for life. The Christian Easter has to do with Jesus' resurrection while the Hebrew Passover has to do with God sparing the children of the Jews while killing the first born of the Egyptians. Remember too that Jesus was a Jew, and he celebrated passover with the last supper. Our English word, Easter, comes from the Old English name of a month in the Germanic Calendar, Eostre, which itself may come from the name of a goddess, Eostre, who often carried a basket filled with eggs.

In Easter the history for Christians the Easter season, or Eastertide, is important. The season used to last only the forty days from Easter until Ascension Day, when Christ rose into heaven, but now is marked for 50 days ending in Pentecost when it's said the Holy Ghost visited the apostles. Pentecost is linked to the Jewish Shavout, which celebrates the giving of the Ten Commandments 50 days after the beginning of the Exodus.

Over time in the Christian church there were many disputes over the date that Easter should be celebrated. The last of these was known as the Quartodeciman. It all came down to whether Easter should be celebrated on Nisan 14 of the Hebrew Calendar, or on the following Sunday. Nisan 14 is the Hebrew Lord's passover, the day people make preparations for the Feast of Unleavened Bread. In Phyrgia (also called the Roman Province of Asia) Easter was celebrated on this day, while everywhere else it was the following Sunday. That was because Nisan 14 could fall any day of the week, while most Christians wanted to celebrate Easter on a Sunday. Originally the dispute was only verbal, and the Bishop of Rome took no action. But one generation later all the Asia minor Bishops were excommunicated because they would not celebrate Easter the Sunday following Nisan 14.

One other element had to do with when the Jews set the date for Nisan 14, and thus for Easter because the Christians had to rely on the Jewish date. Sometimes there were two Nisan 14's in the same year, because Jewish scholars set the date one year before the spring equinox after the last year it was after the spring equinox. The whole thing was cleared up with the First Nicaea Council who separated Easter from the Jewish calculations for Passover.

For more on Easter the History and the ways the date was calculated through time, visit Wikipedia.