On the face of it, Easter appears to be one of those Christian festivals with pagan antecedents. With its theme of death and rebirth and symbols of eggs and bunnies, even its name seems to suggest a pagan festival usurped by Christianity.

So, is Easter a Pagan or Christian festival? Examination of the facts indicates the matter may not be so clear-cut.

 The Pagan Precursors of Easter

 Many people believe that the spring timing of Easter is a sure indicator of pagan origins. The Council of Nicaea set the festival’s timing in 325AD when it ruled that the resurrection should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the full moon following the spring equinox.

The equinox is a sacred time for many pagans, marking the point where day and night are of equal length. This idea fits in nicely with the themes of death and resurrection celebrated by Christians.

Gerald L Berry, author of Religions of the World speculates that the cult of Cybele, which celebrated the death and resurrection of the goddess’s consort Attis between the 22-25 March was one of those festivals that influenced Easter.

The similarity between Attis’s death and that of Jesus have led some to speculate that Christianity actually ‘grafted on’ the pagan resurrection stories of Attis, Dionysus, and Orpheus to the story of Jesus, to allow the Christian resurrection story to usurp their celebrations

Professor Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at The Bristol of University and expert in pre-Christian religion and contemporary paganism does not agree, as he explained in an interview with History and Archaeology Online:

“There is no evidence of any contribution of the Cybele cult to the evolution of Easter,” said Professor Hutton, “Indeed the mystery religion of Cybele may well postdate Christianity and so be influenced by it, rather than vice versa.”

 So much for southern European paganism. However,  can the date of the resurrection be associated with any specific northern European pagan festivals around the time of the equinox?

“There is no known northern European pagan festival in March; there seems to have been a festival gap between early February and late April (which would suit farming rhythms).” Said Professor Hutton.

 Easter and Passover

In fact, the timing of Easter has more to do with Jewish Passover than any pagan festival. The Council of Nicaea’s ruling had nothing to do with superimposing their holy day over an existing pagan spring event. Instead, it was designed to ensure Easter stayed distinct from the Passover and to settle squabbles within the church.

Passover may have formed the backdrop to the crucifixion and resurrection, but the church wanted to ensure that the Christian celebrations were distinct from those of the Jews. Also, there was some debate over the exact day that marked the resurrection. So Nicaea’s timing of Easter was chosen to reach a compromise between the Eastern Church, which calculated Easter according to the phases of the moon, and the Church of Rome, which had fixed its celebrations to a particular Sunday.

 Eostre and Easter

 But even if the spring equinox has no bearing on Easter, many would argue that the festival’s name alone establishes its roots in paganism — in Northern Europe at least.

Most of Europe refers to “Easter” using a range of words derived from the Hebrew for Passover — “Pesach.” So in Italy, Easter is known as Pascha; in Spain, Pascua; Pasques in France and Pasti in Romanian. It is only the German/English speaking nations that refer to the festival as Easter.

The assumption is that the name derives from an Anglo-Saxon Goddess, Eostra, who’s celebrations fell sometime in April. This assumption rests upon a single reference in Bede’s Temporum Ratione (The Reckoning of Time), written in the seventh century AD.

The reference is brief and tantalisingly elusive and refers to the Anglo Saxon names for the calendar:

“The first month, which the Latin’s call January, is Giuli: February is called Solmonath: March Hrethmonath: April, Eosturmonath….”

 Bede explains Eosturmonath as :

“Now translated ‘Paschal month’ and which was once called after a goddess of theirs [the heathens] 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.”

In the 19th century, Jacob Grimm, in his Teutonic Mythology, embellished this theme. He relates Eostre to Ostar — the old German expression for movement towards the sun.

“Ostara, Eostre seems, therefore, to have been a divinity of the radiant dawn, of upspringing light, a spectacle that brings joy and blessing, whose meaning could easily be adapted to the resurrection day of the Christian’s god,” explained Grimm.

A Germanic Anomaly

The trouble is, there is no evidence to substantiate Bede and Grimm’s goddesses. Professor Hutton, in his book Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year, mentions that German speakers were using versions of the name “eostur” to refer to Easter in and around the eighth and ninth centuries. But he doesn’t believe the term relates to a goddess.

“Ostara is merely the German word for Easter, taken from the Anglo Saxon and probably from English missionaries,” said Professor Hutton. “Easter would not be named after the goddess directly but after the month (equivalent to April) named after her.”

In the absence of an identifiable goddess Eostra, some scholars have attempted to suggest that, as Grimm stated, the term “eostra” is associated with various Indo European dawn goddesses such as the Greek Eos, Roman Aurora and Indian Ushas. The Encyclopedia Britannica suggests Easter derived from an Old High German translation of the Latin “in albis”, which refers to “white” or “dawn”. This term translated into Old German as “eostarum“— which, in its turn, led to the name  “Easter.”

But there is no firm historical basis for this. “The suggestion about ‘in albis’ is highly speculative and merely a possibility,” said Professor Hutton.

 Instead, Professor Hutton suggests a possible solution. “It is equally valid, however, to suggest that the Anglo Saxon ‘Estormonath’ simply meant the ‘month of opening’ or the ‘month of beginnings’”, he explained, “and that Bede mistakenly connected it with a goddess who either never existed at all or was never associated with a particular season.”

But Professor Hutton cannot explain why only one group of European Christians would have adopted the term Easter.

 “It is a mystery why the Germanic world chose another term,” he said.

Easter Eggs and Bunnies

But according to Professor Hutton, Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are rooted in paganism, and Christians justify eggs as an Easter treat because they are prohibited during Lent.

“ People all over the world, as far as China have given eggs at spring festival as symbols of the season, so the Lenten prohibition just absorbed that,” said Professor Hutton.

And the Easter bunny?

“ The Easter bunny started out as the German easter hare, which may have pagan origins as the hare is a numinous animal and clearly has a connection with spring,“ explained Professor Hutton, ”but there is no evidence that takes the custom back more than a few hundred years.“

Easter: Christian or Pagan?

 So, Easter owes its timing to the Passover and although it cannot be linked to any particular pagan god or festival, does contain some pagan practices relating to the celebration of spring.

History and Archaeology Online ended by asking Professor Hutton what he thinks about Easter: is it a Christian festival that supplanted pagan celebrations or is it a melding of various traditions into one festival?

“The latter,“ he said, “Easter is much less clearly directly based on previous pagan festivals than many other Christian holy days.“