Is Easter a Pagan Holiday? Some Say Yes—but Is It Really?

Some Christians are very upset about the use of an allegedly “pagan” word to describe the preeminent Christian holiday. Here’s what one commenter wrote:

Easter is a bad translation of a word that does not appear in the original language. It is a carryover from the Greco-Roman world, which was engulfed in sun worship. The holiday and the word should be changed back to Passover. 

Is Easter a pagan holiday?

We as believers don’t want our holy days to be sullied by association with idolatry. No one should call Easter Easter against his or her conscience. But I don’t think we ought to be upset about the word Easter. Here’s why.

1. We’re unsure that “Easter” was a pagan word.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dutifully cites the Venerable Bede’s contention from 1,300 years ago that Easter is derived from a pagan holiday. But that holiday was not Greco-Roman; it was Anglo-Saxon Easter (Bede says) was the goddess of spring. And yet the OED says that this view is not confirmed by any other source, and some scholars suspect the goddess to be Bede’s invention. However, it seems unlikely that Bede would have invented a fictitious pagan festival to account for a Christian one.

This is what you get with scholars, and this is what you should get: an on-the-one-hand followed by an on-the-other-hand—an admission that the evidence is insufficient for deciding. 

We simply don’t know the history of the word Easter. So why fight about it? If you discovered that 38% of scholars believed that O.K. was an ancient curse derived from Ο Κύριος! (O Kurios, “O Lord!”)—Would you refuse to hit the Okay button in a computer dialogue box?

2. Words mean what we use them to mean.

A word's usage, not etymology, determines the meaning of English words. 

For example, the word spinster is now a derogatory way to refer to an unmarried woman who is, shall we say, “past the flower of her youth.” It doesn’t matter that the word spinster once used to mean “a woman who works a spinning wheel.” 

It doesn’t matter that the word had an in-between stage, too, when it just meant “unmarried woman.” Official census records in the seventeenth century could list a woman this way: “Sarah Harris, Sydney, spinster.” We wouldn’t do this nowadays, because words mean what people use them to mean, and that changes over time.

What do English speakers mean when they use the word Easter? 

Who among all the countless English speakers who used the word Easter this very day had any idea that the word might have a pagan origin? Everyone's “authorial intention” was to refer to the Christian celebration. Why should one set of sounds (PAS-soh-vr) be superior to another (EE-str) to name something, as long as everybody understands what EE-str means? EE-str has no associations with paganism anymore, if it ever really did.

We all say Thursday despite its obvious pagan origins (Thor’s Day). 

All the days of the week in English draw their names from paganism. The Easter alternative, “Resurrection Sunday,” then, is just as guilty of pagan associations as Easter supposedly is, because Sunday derives from sun worship. Thankfully, no one means sun worship when they say Sunday. We all know what that word means, and sun worship is not included.

If the true meaning of a word were found in its etymology, we’d have endless word fights about what we were all really saying without knowing it. I encourage people to revel in their ignorance of what words used to mean and work instead to be sure of what people use them to mean now.

3. Word fights distract us from the substantive issues.

“Word fights” are explicitly condemned by Paul in the pastoral epistles (1 Tim 6:4; 2 Tim 2:14). If you can honestly say of an argument, “It’s all semantics,” then it’s a mere quarrel, and we’re not supposed to engage in it. (So what am I doing writing about it? I’m trying to get everybody to stop fighting, so I’m okay. I hope.)

One problem with word fights is that they distract us from genuinely substantive issues. As with the Christmas holidays, the labels we use now have cultural practices, symbols, and “habits of the heart” associated with them. The commercialization of Christmas is often lamented. How about the commercialization of Easter? It gets lamented, too, but maybe not enough.

Whatever pastels, painted eggs, and white rabbits used to mean centuries ago (I, frankly, have no idea), I know what they mean today: Chocolate full of sugar! The sores are filled with them.

So far, even our best theologians have not figured out what chocolate has to do with Jesus's resurrection. I see more possible harm in kids losing the holiday's significance through sugar rushes than in the Easter label. 

Many kids are tempted to worship the god of Mars Bars rather than burrow into my OED, discover that Easter may possibly have referred to an ancient goddess they’ve never heard of, and become her pagan devotees.


Easter—Christ’s true, physical resurrection—lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.