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Resurrection Day

Called Easter in English

The yearly feast of Christ’s death and resurrection, kept since at least the second century as Pascha, Passover. Its English name, Easter, comes from an Anglo-Saxon month.

Why not “Easter”?

The New Testament never calls this day Easter. The early church called it Pascha, Passover, because “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7), and most of the world still does: Pascua, Pâques, Pasqua. “Easter” is an English and German name. The one time it appears in the King James Bible, Acts 12:4, it translates pascha, the word rendered “passover” everywhere else.

Bede, writing in 725, said the name came from a goddess, Eostre[source 1]; historians still debate that[source 4]. Whatever its origin, the name says nothing about what the day is for. So we call it Resurrection Day.

Historical origin

Christians in most languages call the feast by a form of the Greek pascha, from the Hebrew pesach, Passover: Pâques in French, Pascua in Spanish, Pasqua in Italian. Jesus was crucified at Passover, and around AD 54 Paul wrote that “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us” (1 Corinthians 5:7).

By the second century, churches disagreed about when to keep the feast. The churches of the Roman province of Asia, citing a tradition from the apostle John, kept it on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month Nisan, whatever day of the week that fell; they were later called Quartodecimans, from the Latin for “fourteenth.” Rome and most other churches kept it on a Sunday[source 2]. Around 155, Bishops Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicetus of Rome discussed the difference without settling it, each holding to the custom of those before him; Irenaeus later wrote that the earlier Roman bishops “neither observed it” themselves, which some historians read as meaning Rome kept no yearly Pascha before about 165[source 2]. Around 190, Bishop Victor of Rome tried to cut the Asian churches off over the date[source 2]. A homily On Pascha by Melito of Sardis, from about 165, shows how one Quartodeciman church preached the feast, centered on Christ’s passion[source 7].

In 325 the Council of Nicaea agreed that all churches should keep Pascha on the same Sunday, independently of the Jewish calendar; the decision is known from Constantine’s letter to the churches[source 3]. It did not fix a method of calculation, disagreements persisted, and since the Gregorian calendar reform of 1582, Western and Eastern churches have usually celebrated on different dates.

The English name, Easter, has a different history. The monk Bede, writing in 725, explained that the Anglo-Saxons called April Eosturmonath after a goddess, Eostre, once honored in that month, and that the name had passed to the Christian feast[source 1]. Bede is the only ancient witness to this goddess[source 4]. The German Ostern shares the root.

Eggs and hares came later. Eggs were forbidden during the Lenten fast in medieval Europe and became part of the celebration that ended it[source 5], and the egg-bringing Easter hare is first described in German lands in 1682[source 8].

Timeline

  1. c. 54Paul calls Christ “our passover” (1 Corinthians 5:7).
  2. c. 155Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicetus of Rome discuss their churches’ differing customs.
  3. c. 165Melito of Sardis preaches On Pascha.
  4. c. 190Victor of Rome tries to excommunicate the churches of Asia over the date.
  5. 325The Council of Nicaea agrees on a common Sunday celebration.
  6. 725Bede ties the English name to the month Eosturmonath and a goddess Eostre.
  7. 1682The egg-bringing Easter hare is first described in Germany.
  8. 1853–58Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons equates Easter with Astarte.

In scripture

  • Exodus 12:1–14

    The first Passover: a lamb killed on the fourteenth day of the first month.

  • 1 Corinthians 5:7–8

    “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast.”

  • Matthew 28:1–6

    Women come to the tomb at dawn on the first day of the week and find it empty.

  • Acts 12:4

    The only place the KJV says “Easter”; the Greek word is pascha, rendered “passover” elsewhere.

The early church, AD 30–100

The New Testament does not command a yearly feast, but it ties Jesus’ death to Passover (John 19:14; 1 Corinthians 5:7) and his resurrection to “the first day of the week” (Matthew 28:1). Talley and others take the Asian churches’ claim that their practice came from the apostle John as evidence that some yearly observance reached back near the apostolic generation, though no source from before AD 100 describes one directly[source 2][source 9].

Popular claims

Each claim is rated against the evidence. About the ratings

  • “Easter is named after the Babylonian goddess Ishtar.”

    Contradicted

    The English name comes from Old English Eastre, which Bede tied to a goddess Eostre and a spring month[source 1]; the word shares a root with words for “east” and “dawn”[source 4]. Ishtar is a similar-sounding name of unrelated, Akkadian origin, and most languages call the feast Pascha, after Passover. The Ishtar link traces to Alexander Hislop’s The Two Babylons (1853; expanded 1858), which equated Easter with Astarte[source 6].

  • “Easter is named after an Anglo-Saxon goddess, Eostre.”

    Debated

    Bede is the only source, and some scholars have suspected he inferred the goddess from the month’s name. Others accept his report, and inscriptions to Germanic mother goddesses called the Austriahenae, found in 1958, may share the root[source 4].

  • “Christians kept a yearly Pascha, the feast of Christ’s death and resurrection, from the earliest times.”

    Supported

    The churches of Asia traced their custom to the apostle John, and by the 150s Polycarp and Anicetus each defended their church’s practice as inherited from their predecessors[source 2]. Whether Rome kept any yearly Pascha before about 165 is disputed, and no first-century description survives[source 2][source 9].

  • “Easter eggs and the Easter bunny come from pagan fertility rites.”

    Unverified

    Eggs and hares are old symbols of new life, but no source ties them to a pre-Christian spring festival. The documented history is later: eggs held back through the Lenten fast[source 5], and a German folk custom of an egg-bringing hare first recorded in 1682[source 8].

Sources

  1. Bede. The Reckoning of Time, ch. 15. Translated by Faith Wallis. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999.
  2. Eusebius. Church History 5.23–25. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 1, via New Advent. Link to this source
  3. Eusebius. Life of Constantine 3.5, 3.18–19. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, 2nd series, vol. 1, via New Advent. Link to this source
  4. Shaw, Philip A. Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostre, Hreda and the Cult of Matrons. London: Bristol Classical Press, 2011.
  5. Hutton, Ronald. The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Link to this source
  6. Hislop, Alexander. The Two Babylons; or, The Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife. Edinburgh, 1853; expanded ed. 1858. Link to this source
  7. Melito of Sardis. On Pascha. Translated by Alistair Stewart-Sykes. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001.
  8. Franck von Franckenau, Georg. De ovis paschalibus [On Easter Eggs]. Heidelberg, 1682.
  9. Talley, Thomas J. The Origins of the Liturgical Year. 2nd ed. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991. Link to this source

Last reviewed October 25, 2026.