Pastor Gino Jennings: What is Lent Ash Wednesday #shorts

[isaiah]

Trying to link the Easter bunny to Catholics doesn't change the fact that it's a cultural tradition, not religious, and that it was popularized in the English-speaking world by German Lutherans, especially those who migrated to the colonial USA (especially Pennsylvania). It is/was completely absent in non-English & non-German cultures/colonies until recently, and is still completely absent in most of the Catholic or Orthodox world. The Easter bunny has no place in worship services, so it's a non-issue being hyped up anyway.

[brendanculleton]

You haven't a clue, I pray for your conversation

[isaiah]

The idea that "Easter is pagan" is untrue and sounds even more senseless coming from the mouth of someone who believes that Jesus is Lord. Calling it "Resurrection Sunday" or "Passover" doesn't change the fact that you're celebrating the resurrection of Jesus, just as Christians who call it "Easter" (English) & "Östern" (German) do.

I point out those two related languages, because the claim that Easter is pagan is largely built upon the erroneous assertion that the name itself comes from the Babylonian pagan fertility goddess "Ishtar", or alternatively from a supposed goddess named "Eostre" in some form of Germanic paganism. Eostre and Ishtar are NOT the same; they come from two unrelated cultures & unrelated languages. The existence of Eostre has been questioned by historians, so that old claim made by a single person is largely unverified.

In most other languages - including Latin, Greek, Aramaic, Ge'ez/Amharic & languages derived from them - the name for Easter is in fact some variation of "Pesach", the Hebrew name for Passover. The Angles & Saxons (the Germanic ancestors of the English) were Christianized much later than the peoples who spoke the languages previously mentioned, who were among the very first. Even after the evangelization of the Anglo-Saxons, the modern descendants of the Vikings of Scandinavia & Samogitians of Lithuania, who were among the very LAST Europeans to be Christianized, call it some derivation of Pask (from Pesach) & Velykos ("important day"), not "Eostre".