Easter Traditions
People celebrate Easter by partaking in the many Easter Traditions that surround the holiday. Not only are these traditions religious, but also secular and seasonal in nature.
The holiday name is an important one of these Easter Traditions. What many people don’t realize is that most of the world names Easter based on a different root word than the English word, Easter. In English the word Easter derives from the Old English word Eostre, relating to the name of a month in the Germanic calendar. But in most other languages the holiday name comes from the Greek Pascha, itself related to the Hebrew word for the Passover. The Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre may also have something to do with the English Easter she often carried baskets of eggs.
Passover is linked to Easter Traditions in many other ways. Christians mark the Last Supper as a key event in the Easter celebration, and it took place either just prior to or during Passover. Also, both Passover and Easter have to do with life springing from death, so they share symbolism. Christ rose from his grave on Easter, according to the celebration. Passover is about the angel of death passing over Jewish homes on his way to kill all the first born in the land. Therefore both have to do with various life symbols such as eggs and the baby chicks that come from them, and the new life returned during spring.
For a long time the date of Passover had a lot to do with Easter traditions. Easter, like Passover, isn’t on a specific day but rather is set according to moon and solar phases, particularly the vernal equinox and the full moon. Up until the 4th century AD Christians depended on Jewish scholars to calculate the dates for Passover, and then would base the date for Easter on that either on the Jewish date of preparing for Passover or on the first Sunday following that date. However in 325 AD the First Nicaean Council decreed that Christians should not rely on the date the Jewish religion set for Nisan 14 or Passover. One set of disputes ended, but there are still occasional discussions about the date for Easter. There are 35 possible dates for Easter in the Gregorian calendar used in America. This ongoing cycle repeats only once every 5,700,000 years. It won’t be until 2160 that Easter falls on March 23 again like it did in 2008.
Many more Easter traditions exist, and are followed all over the world. For more information on the holiday try a Google search.
