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The Truth about Easter

What do colored eggs and bunny rabbits have to do with Christ and his teachings? Are the practices of Easter really Christian?

Most Biblically-educated Christians today would say that Easter is the celebration of Christ’s resurrection from the tomb and that chocolate bunnies, Easter baskets and colored eggs are just traditions that have attached themselves to the day. They are fun for the kids, so what harm is there in them anyway.

Many believe that these time-honored customs at Easter time are Christian and must, therefore, date back to the early Christian Church.

The truth about Easter could surprise you. Most of the traditions and customs surrounding Easter go back centuries before the birth of Christ and have nothing whatever to do with him or his teachings.

The word “Easter” itself comes from Ishtar, Eostre, Ostera, or Astarte, a pagan goddess. Any real student of the Bible has to be aware of God’s injunction to the Israelites to keep away from following the customs of the pagan gods and goddesses.

If God said that following the pagan practices in that day was contrary to his ways — an abomination — why do most think it doesn’t make any difference today? God doesn’t change. Just because he isn’t thundering from the top of the mountain in current time does not void what he said in that day. He spoke for all time and to all mankind.

Yet, today, we find the Easter season, that supposedly commemorates Jesus’ death and resurrection, focused on traditions and customs that have nothing to do with Christ — customs that God called an abomination. What is that all about?

A Pagan Feast
Long before the time of Christ and long before the Israelites entered the Promised Land, the pagan peoples kept a “Feast of New Life” every spring. It was the celebration of the spring sun, which had its birth in the East and brought new life upon the earth.

This feast was surrounded with many symbols of those pagan people’s belief system. Eggs, a symbol of fertility in many lands, can be found in the lore of many early nations, as can the rabbit. This rapidly breeding and multiplying animal was an ancient symbol of fertility. Today, when children eagerly hunt for Easter eggs supposedly deposited by the Easter bunny, they are unknowingly following an ancient fertility rite. Do you think God looks with favor on this?

Other symbols of the Easter season can also be traced back to ancient paganism. The Easter parade was a part of that “Feast of New Life” when the followers donned new hats and new clothing to honor their goddess of spring. Scholars have traced the Easter parade to similar rites in ancient Germany, Greece, and even India, as well as the Babylonian empire.

Hot-cross buns, interestingly enough, were eaten by pagan Saxons in honor of Easter, their goddess of light. The Mexicans and Peruvians had a similar custom. These hot-cross buns can be found in almost every early tradition in every nation, all associated with spring fertility festivals or festivals honoring the return of the sun.

Even Easter sunrise services can be found in the ancient traditions. They go back to the pagan custom of prostrating oneself before the rising springtime sun. The goddess of light, Eostre or Ostera (and many other names of a similar etymology), was identified with the rising sun.

Plainly, Easter has its roots deep in ancient paganism — centuries before the birth of Christ — and its rites have not changed very much.

What About Lent?
Even the pre-Easter Lent can be traced back to paganism. This ancient custom was introduced into the Christian Church in the early 500’s A.D. — not at the time of Christ, but long after his life and death, yet had been a custom long before his birth.

In “The Two Babylons,” Alexander Hislop writes:

“The forty days’ abstinence of Lent was directly borrowed from the worshippers of the Babylonian goddess. Such a Lent of forty days, ‘in the spring of the year,’ is still observed by the Yezidis or pagan devil-worshippers of Koordistan, who have inherited it from their early masters, the Babylonians.

“Such a Lent of forty days was also held in the spring by the pagan Mexicans. … [and also] was observed in Egypt, as may be seen on consulting Wilkinson’s Egyptians. This Egyptian Lent of forty days, we are informed by Landseer, in his Sabean Researches, was held expressly in commemoration of Adonis or Osiris, the great mediatorial god.

“Among the pagans this Lent seems to have been an indispensable preliminary to the great annual festival in commemoration of the death and resurrection of Tammuz, which was celebrated by alternate weeping and rejoicing…”

Hislop points out that these pagan festivals were held slightly later in the year than the Passover that was observed in Israel. Then on page 105, speaking to the time when the Roman Catholic Church brought the pagan practices into Christianity, Hislop goes on to say:

“To conciliate the pagans to nominal Christianity, Rome, pursuing its usual policy, took measures to get the Christian and pagan festivals amalgamated, and, by a complicated but skillful adjustment of the calendar, it was found no difficult matter, in general, to get paganism and Christianity — now far sunk in idolatry — in this as in so many other things, to shake hands.”

And yet, you ask, “what difference does it make?” Christians today claim to be celebrating Jesus’ resurrection from the tomb on Easter Sunday. Are they? Do you really know for sure?

When Did Christ
Rise From the Tomb?
The common belief is that Jesus arose early on Sunday morning, thus Christian churches often hold sunrise services to commemorate that event. Yet in John 20:1, read what it says.

Now on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene went early, while it was still dark, to the tomb, and saw the stone taken away from the tomb.

The tomb of Jesus was already empty. It was still dark. The sun had not come over the horizon, but he was not there. He had already risen!

Jesus did not arise from the dead at sunrise. He was taken up at some point during the night. Yet, you can find a pagan custom for this belief in the sunrise event. There is a pagan custom of holding a sunrise service in the spring to worship the risen sun god, Baal, Tammuz, or Nimrod.

Let’s look at the three days and three nights in the tomb. How Christianity can get three days and three nights from Friday afternoon to Sunday morning is still a mystery to anyone with a brain or even ten fingers on which to count.

Jesus foretold about himself that he would be in the grave three days and three nights, even as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights (Matt. 12:40). According to Jewish reckoning, that could mean parts of three days and three nights, inclusive. This would be counted as part of Thursday, day, Thursday night, Friday day, Friday night, Saturday (day three), and part of Saturday night (night three).

But you can’t count three days and three nights or even a portion of them between Friday afternoon and Sunday sunrise. Even using portions of days you still can only come up with two days and two nights.

The idea that Jesus was crucified on Friday is false. According to his own prophecy, it is impossible. So where did “Good Friday” come from?

What About Good Friday?
At this point you probably won’t be surprised to learn that it also comes from paganism. Friday was regarded by the Romans as the sacred day of Venus and was called dies Veneris. The word Friday itself comes from the name of “Freya,” who was regarded as the goddess of peace, joy, and fertility by the pagans. Fish was regarded as being sacred to her, and was a symbol of fertility. Fish have a very high reproduction rate, a single cod spawning upwards of nine million eggs, a million eggs for the flounder, and 700,000 for the sturgeon.

Hence the custom of not eating fish on Friday stems also from ancient pagan times, in honor of the goddess of fertility, Freya, or Venus. The fish was also regarded as sacred to the goddess Ashtoreth, and in ancient Egypt the goddess Isis is sometimes represented as having a fish on her head.

Strange, isn’t it, how all these customs go back to ancient paganism—all things that God has called an abomination.

Writes Alan W. Watts in “Easter, Its Story and Meaning:”

“It would be tedious to describe in detail all that has been handed down to us about the various rites of Tammuz, Adonis, Kore, Dionysus, and many others … Some of them were celebrated at the vernal equinox, or thereabouts, and some at midsummer. But their universal theme — the drama of death and resurrection — makes them the forerunners of the Christian Easter, and thus the first ‘Easter services’.” (p. 58)

James George Frazer in “The Golden Bough,” writes:

“When we reflect how often the Church has skillfully contrived to plant the seeds of the new faith on the old stock of paganism, we may surmise that the Eastern celebration of the dead and risen Christ was grafted upon a similar celebration of the dead and risen Adonis, which … was celebrated in Syria at the same season.” (p. 345)

In analyzing the strange customs of the pagans and their astonishing similarity to certain Christian customs today, Alan Watts was moved to write:

“At first sight it is surprising to find so many of these stories and symbols of death-and-resurrection in so many different places. The points of resemblance between the Christ story, on the one hand, and the myth and ritual of ancient and pagan cults, on the other, is at times startling enough to look like a conspiracy.” (p. 22)

A Conspiracy?
You better believe it. But, how do you think such a thing could happen?

Remember that Lucifer, the covering cherub, the light-bearer, was already fallen before man was created and put in the Garden of Eden. God had a definite plan in mind when he created the first man and woman. The angels in heaven all knew what God’s plan was to be — including Lucifer and all the fallen angels — even if they didn’t know every detail or the reasons why.

Lucifer did not want God’s plan to succeed. His pride and arrogance have always been such that he wants to be worshipped himself. He wants all the attention focused on him and his mission is now, and has always been, to thwart God’s plan. What better way to confuse all of mankind than to introduce elements of God’s plan, in a distorted way, to men long before the actual time when they should happen. For instance, the death and resurrection myths that abound in ancient pagan belief systems.

Lucifer knew that God planned to send his Son to earth, that his Son would die and be resurrected. All of God’s plan hinges on that very event. So Lucifer covered the earth with stories and myths of the same kind long before it would actually happen. Even though those stories are known to be myths and pagan, how easy it is for people today to question the truth of the Bible when they run into the same story.

God warned man not to chase after other gods. He instructed the Israelites when they entered the Promised Land not to worship Him as the pagans worshiped their gods. When Israel did not listen, God punished them.

What makes you think you will escape today? Why does modern man think that God’s injunctions as spelled out in his Word, do not apply to them today?

What Will You Do?
Satan has not stopped his work of confusing mankind and messing with God’s Word. His greatest success has been to convince men that once Jesus came, everything that God said before that time is now null and void.

He has completely indoctrinated those who claim to be Christians that they are justified in doing away with all things Jewish. After all, they were just legalists, anyway! Right? And Jesus and the Apostles instituted the church to replace them! Right?

Afraid not! That is a lie that Satan has foisted off on the church and it will lead to their complete downfall (which is the basis for another article entirely). When Christ returns to earth, who will he find who is living as he did? Who will he find who is obeying God’s commandments and statutes? Who will he find who has the faith once given to the saints?

It is unlikely to be those who are observing pagan practices and calling them Christian. The Israelites tried that and they lost their homeland. It is unlikely to be those who have adopted the traditions of men — those who twist the scriptures to fit their traditions, rather than allowing their traditions to fit the scriptures.

God does not smile on Good Friday ceremonies and Easter morning services. If he had, you would find the Apostles and the early church observing them. They did not — they continued to observe Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread. God never gave Good Friday and Easter to be observed and he does not look upon them with favor. They are “chasing after the way of the pagans,” something that God labeled as abominations. He said not to worship him in that way.

So what are you doing? Will you insist on sticking to your own way, or do you want to really be approved and ready for the kingdom when Christ returns?