The Christian festival of Easter celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The spring festival has its roots in the Jewish Passover, which commemorates Israel's deliverance from the bondage of Egypt, and in the Christian reinterpretation of its meaning after the crucifixion of Jesus during the Passover of AD c.30 and the proclamation of his resurrection three days later. Early Christians observed Easter on the same day as Passover (14-15 Nisan, a date governed by a lunar calendar). In the 2nd century, the Christian celebration was transferred to the Sunday following the 14-15 Nisan, if that day fell on a weekday. Originally, the Christian Easter was a unitive celebration, but in the 4th century Good Friday became a separate commemoration of the death of Christ, and Easter was thereafter devoted exclusively to the resurrection.
According to the Venerable Bede, the name Easter is derived from the pagan spring festival of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, and many folk customs associated with Easter (for example, Easter eggs) are of pagan origin. Easter Day is currently determined as the first Sunday after the full moon on or after March 21. The Eastern Orthodox churches, however, follow the Julian rather than the Gregorian calendar, so their celebration usually falls several weeks later than the Western Easter. Easter is preceded by the period of preparation called Lent.
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Bibliography: Dix, Gregory, The Shape of the Liturgy, 2nd ed. (1945); McArthur, A. A., The Evolution of the Christian Year (1953); Perry, C.A., The Resurrection Promise (1986).
Easter is the annual day and season commemorating the resurrection of Christ. As the oldest and most important movable feast, its date determines the arrangement of the Christian liturgical year.
In Germanic languages the words used (English easter; German ostern) are thought to derive either from the name of an obscure Germanic goddess of spring, Eastre (a view popularized by the English monk Bede), or, more likely, from an Old German root for dawn or east (the time and place of the rising sun). At an early date and for obscure reasons these Germanic words came to translate the Greek pascha (from the Hebrew pesah), the biblical word for the paschal (passover) feast used by most of the Romance languages (French paques; Italian pasqua).
The early development of the celebration of Easter and the attendant calendar disputes were largely a result of Christianity's attempt to emancipate itself from Judaism. Sunday had already replaced the Jewish sabbath early in the second century, and despite efforts in Asia Minor to maintain the Jewish passover date of 14 Nisan for Easter (hence the name Quartodecimans), the Council of Nicaea adopted the annual Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox (March 21). Unfortunately, different methods of Easter reckoning devised to reconcile the Jewish lunar and Roman solar calendars led to several disputes, such as the one in seventh century Britain between Celtic and Roman Christianity. Even the notable calendar reform sponsored by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 was primarily an attempt to keep Easter in the spring by correcting the drift (eleven days at the point) of the less accurate Julian calendar. Since Eastern Orthodox still follows the old calendar, it can be as much as five weeks at variance with the other churches in celebrating Easter. In recent years concern for Christian unity has led to proposals for a universal fixed date such as the second Sunday in April. This in turn would make possible the creation of uniform world liturgy.
Originally Easter was a unitary night celebration (like passover), recalling both the death and resurrection of Christ. The ceremony included the lighting of the paschal candle, prayer, readings from Scripture, and the joyful celebration of Eucharist. This also became the ideal occasion for baptisms (with resurrection life symbolized by white robes) and led in turn to the lengthening of the brief preparatory period into the forty days of Lent (paralleling Christ's forty-day fast before his passion). Accordingly, after the fourth century the unitary feast was broken up into several parts and the resurrection came to be celebrated separately on Easter Sunday morning, with Eastertide extending another forty or fifty days. Over the centuries many popular customs have been added reflecting pagan spring folklore (Easter egg and rabbit) as well as Jewish and Christian sources.
R K Bishop
(Elwell Evangelical Dictionary)
Bibliography
L. Cowie and J. Gummer, The Christian Year; G. Dix, The
Shape of the Liturgy; D. Jones, G. Wainwright, and E. Yarnold, The
Study of the Liturgy; F. Weiser, The Easter Book; E. Zerubavel, "Easter
and Passover: On Calendars and Group Identity," ASR, Apr., 1982.
Easter was originally a Saxon word (Eostre), denoting a goddess of the Saxons, in honour of whom sacrifices were offered about the time of the Passover. Hence the name came to be given to the festival of the Resurrection of Christ, which occured at the time of the Passover. In the early English versions this word was frequently used as the translation of the Greek pascha (the Passover). When the Authorized Version (1611) was formed, the word "passover" was used in all passages in which this word pascha occurred, except in Act 12:4. In the Revised Version the proper word, "passover," is always used.
(Easton Illustrated Dictionary)
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