Is Easter a pagan holiday?
Easter is a bad translation of a word that does not appear in the original language.… Easter 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. This was one of the best comments from the say-no-to-Easter perspective: it was clear, avoided ad hominem, and was written in lower case. Is Easter a pagan holiday? We as believers don’t want our holy days to be sullied by association with idolatry. And I want to state at the outset that 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 not sure that “Easter” was a pagan word. The soberest and reliable source out there, the Oxford English Dictionary, 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