Question:

How is Easter Sunday determined? Palm Sunday? Ash Wednesday?

Answer:

Jesus rose from the dead on the first Sunday following the feast of Passover. (Technically, he may have risen Saturday night, but that still counts as Sunday on the Jewish reckoning, which begins each day at sunset instead of at midnight.)

The date of Passover is a complicated thing. Theoretically, the date should be the 14th of the Jewish month of Nisan, and it should correspond to a full moon (the Jewish calendar being partly lunar). In practice, it didn’t always work out that way. The month-moon cycles got out of synch, and sometimes feasts would be held on a “liturgical” full moon even when it was not an astronomical full moon. As a result, rabbis periodically had to announce when Passover would be celebrated.

Christians didn’t like being dependent on the pronouncements of rabbis for how to celebrate Christian feasts, so they came up with another way of determining the date. They decided that Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after (never on) the Paschal full moon.

Theoretically, the Paschal full moon is the first full moon occurring on or after the spring equinox. However, this day can be reckoned in different ways. One way is by looking at the sky, which yields the astronomical spring equinox. But since this shifts from year to year, most people follow the calendrical spring equinox, which is reckoned as March 21.

On the Gregorian calendar (the one that we use), Easter is the first Sunday after the Paschal full moon, which is the first full moon on or after March 21. Easter thus always falls between March 22 and April 25.

Now, to find Palm Sunday (the sixth Sunday of Lent) you start with the date of Easter and back up one week: It is the Sunday before Easter Sunday.

To find Ash Wednesday, you start with the date of Easter Sunday, back up six weeks (that gives you the first Sunday of Lent), and then back up four more days: Ash Wednesday is the Wednesday before the first Sunday of Lent.

 

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CHALLENGE

“Easter is a pagan holiday. Its timing is based on the full moon and the spring equinox, and it’s named after the goddess Ishtar.”

DEFENSE

Easter’s origins are Jewish. It is the Christian equivalent of Passover.

The word “Easter” is of English origin. Ishtar was worshipped in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), not England, which is thousands of miles away. Despite sounding similar, the two words are unrelated.

The eighth-century British historian Bede claimed the word “Easter” came from the name of the month in which it occurred (basically, April). He said this month used to be called “Eostur,” though this was no longer true in his day. He also thought the month was named after a Germanic goddess who was no longer worshipped (The Reckoning of Time 15).

Bede is the only source who mentions this goddess, so he may be incorrect. Regardless, this applies only to the origin of the English word—not the origin of the feast. Its origin is revealed by its name in other languages. In Italian, it’s Pasqua; in Spanish, Pascha; in Portugese, Páscoa; in French, Pâques; in Danish, Paaske; in Dutch, Pasen; in Swedish, Påsk; and so on. All of these derive from the Latin Pascha or Greek Paskha, both of which are words for the Jewish feast of Passover (Hebrew, Pesakh).

The event Easter celebrates is the Resurrection of Jesus, and it is celebrated in conjunction with Passover because Jesus was crucified at Passover and rose the following Sunday (John 19:14–18, 20:1–20).

The reason Easter’s timing is based on the full moon after the spring equinox is because that was the timing of Passover on the Jewish calendar. The Law of Moses requires Passover to be celebrated on the fourteenth of the month of Nisan (Lev. 23:5). This is a spring month that contains the equinox, and because the Jewish months begin on the new moon, the fourteenth fell on the full moon. The timing of the feast thus is Jewish, not pagan.

What is ultimately important is what Easter signifies today—the Resurrection of Jesus—not where it came from.

TIP

The mistake of judging something based on where it came from rather than what it is has been called “the genetic fallacy.”
 

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Question:

My daughter-in-law says the name of the pagan goddess "Ishtar" translates to "Easter" in English. How can she make this statement?

Answer:

Your daughter-in-law is mistaken.

In Jeremiah 44:15-17, the people of Judah reject the prophet Jeremiah’s message in preference to their idolatrous worship of an entity called “the queen of heaven”—apparently the pagan deity Ishtar. Commentators seem to be in general agreement that Jeremiah’s “queen of heaven” is “Astaroth” or “Ashtaroth”—“Astarte” in the Septuagint, which is the Greek Old Testament. Literally, “Astaroth” means “the moon.” The moon was a Sidonian idol worshipped by the Phoenicians and worshipped as Ishtar by the Assyrians, Egyptians and Babylonians. In nature worship, the sun and the moon were considered the king and queen, respectively, of the celestial heavens.

Some people have inferred that “Easter” is the English derivation of the Greek “Astarte,” but there is no linguistic or historical basis for this. In addition, the English word Easter is said to have derived from an Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess named Eostre. This theory was based on an incorrect conclusion by St. Bede the Venerable about the etymological origins of the English month that coincides with spring and the celebration of Easter, “Eosturmonath.” But, as Anthony McRoy, a fellow of the British Society for Middle East Studies, notes, there is no historical basis for this derivation. He notes that St. Bede himself said that his conclusion was based on his interpretation rather than a generally held position or proven fact.

Also, there is no doubt that the focus of Easter for St. Bede and English Christians in general, was and is Jesus, the Passover Lamb who died on our behalf and rose from the dead.

Indeed, in most European countries, the name for Easter derives from the Greek word Pascha, which itself is derived from the Hebrew Pesach, i.e., the word “Passover.” Thus, the term “paschal sacrifice” refers to Jesus’ one a acrifice, and “paschal candle” is another name for the Easter candle.

So where did the English get their word for the celebration of Christ’s Resurrection? McRoy notes there are two main theories, both of which are plausible:

“One theory for the origin of the name is that the Latin phrase in albis (‘in white’), which Christians used in reference to Easter week, found its way into Old High German as eostarum, or ‘dawn.'” The other is that “Eosturmonath simply meant ‘the month of opening,’ which is comparable to the meaning of ‘April’ in Latin. The names of both the Saxon and Latin months (which are calendrically similar) were related to spring, the season when the buds open.”

In either case, the claim that the English celebration is rooted in pagan goddess worship simply has no historical basis, even if some anti-Catholic polemicists have gotten a good deal of mileage out of it.
 

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No, Easter Is Not a Pagan Holiday

There’s a popular image that makes its rounds on social media every year, claiming that the Christian celebration of Easter finds its roots in the more ancient celebration of the Germanic goddess Eostre, also known as Ishtar. The text in the graphic reads as follows:

This is Ishtar:

Pronounced “Easter.”

Easter was originally the celebration of Ishtar, the Assyrian and Babylonian goddess of fertility and sex. Her symbols (like the egg and the bunny) were and still are fertility and sex symbols (or did you actually think eggs and bunnies had anything to do with the resurrection?). After Constantine decided to Christianize the Empire, Easter was changed to represent Jesus. But at its roots, Easter (which is how you pronounce Ishtar) is all about celebrating fertility and sex.

St. Paul tells us, “Test everything; hold fast what is good” (1 Thess. 5:21). When it comes to this Eostre-Ishtar-Easter claim, we can conceive of a situation where cultural practices are “baptized” by retaining certain elements while letting problematic ones go. If that were the case with Easter, it wouldn’t be a big deal, just as it isn’t a big deal when we find it elsewhere. If the original custom was about celebrating fertility and sex, it is certainly not about that anymore. It’s all about the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Any Catholic will tell you that. So you could simply dismiss claims like these when you encounter them and not worry much about whether they’re true or not.

But some Christian fundamentalists, neopagans, and atheists will use arguments like the one from the viral graphic—albeit in slightly modified ways and for different reasons—as a stick to beat Catholics as we near our most important celebration of the year. I don’t like being beaten with sticks, especially when I know that my assailants are on shaky ground.

The truth is that historians know jack squat about “Eostre.” The only primary source we have in the entire historical record comes from St. Bede, an English Catholic monk. On this topic, he writes,

Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated “Paschal month”, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month.  Now they designate that Paschal season by her name, calling the joys of the new rite by the time-honoured name of the old observance (The Reckoning of Time, 725 AD).

That’s it, folks. Everything we know about this so-called “Eostre” is right there in that short quote. And Bede may have been mistaken. “Eostre” doesn’t show up in the surviving mythologies of any of the surrounding areas as one might expect. Some writers have speculated that this goddess was localized, but that raises the question: why would the Catholic Church bother to create a holiday simply to supplant the celebration of one or two backwoods tribes? Surely, Catholic leadership in those days could have chosen to appropriate the holidays of more notable pagan gods!

The fact that we know virtually nothing about “Eostre”—or even if there was such a goddess at all—makes the jump from her to the Babylonian deity Ishtar even more perplexing. Some neopagans attempt to make the connection through the etymology of the words. “Eostre” likely comes from the Old English word Ēastre, which was a reference to springtime or the dawn. From this perspective, proponents of the Ishtar theory must cobble together bits and pieces of other “goddesses of the dawn.”

It should be noted that the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus is called “Easter” only by English-speaking Christians. The rest of the world calls it Pascha—or some derivative of that—which means “Passover” to commemorate the sacrifice of Our Lord, our “paschal lamb.”

Another claim made in the Ishtar graphic is that bunnies and eggs are fertility symbols, like the ones associated with Ishtar. I suppose that in some cultures they are seen as fertility symbols, but they are not associated with Easter in every culture.

There is no clear historical explanation for how these symbols came to be connected to Easter in the United States. Some scholars think German migrants may have brought the custom with them. History.com explains:

According to some sources, the Easter bunny first arrived in America in the 1700s with German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania and transported their tradition of an egg-laying hare called “Osterhase” or “Oschter Haws.” Their children made nests in which this creature could lay its colored eggs. Eventually, the custom spread across the U.S. and the fabled rabbit’s Easter morning deliveries expanded to include chocolate and other types of candy and gifts, while decorated baskets replaced nests. Additionally, children often left out carrots for the bunny in case he got hungry from all his hopping.

My own personal belief is that these customs—like milk and cookies for Santa at Christmas—developed as something fun to do with the kids. They likely don’t have any deep connection to the holidays themselves. Even if a connection to ancient pagan practice could be demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, their original significance has been lost to the passage of time.

And finally, what good anti-Catholic conspiracy theory doesn’t involve the Roman emperor Constantine? Although it has been said that Constantine did much to allow the Christian religion to flourish, it’s a stretch to claim he decided to “Christianize the empire,” altering the celebration of Easter to represent the resurrection of Jesus. Constantine called for the Council at Nicaea to settle the Arian controversy, and while it was convened, the council fathers also settled the debate over when to celebrate Easter. The feast was already being celebrated at that time. The dispute was only about what day it should fall on. That’s the extent of the connection.

There is a great lesson in apologetics in all of this. Whenever you are confronted with claims that some element of Catholic customs or practice were “borrowed” from ancient pagan religions, you can rest easy knowing that most of these are based on speculation, or on dated or shoddy scholarship. If you run across this popular image on social media this Easter season, please feel free to use the graphic below as a response.

 

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