What Should We Call Easter?

 ​*This blog seeks to speak into a conversations I’ve heard many Christians wrestle with in our post-Christian age.

For most secular Canadians today, Easter is a nice spring holiday to eat chocolate while enjoying time off work. Its imagery of bunnies and chicks speak of spring and new life (themselves pagan symbols). This is a far cry from conjuring up images of the cross and empty tomb, which alone offer true life. Because Easter and Easter don’t mean the same thing anymore, perhaps it is time for a change, to rename Easter? We have further warrant. Easter itself, or Eostre, was a Germanic pagan fertility goddess. Her worship was popular in Northern Europe to mark the spring equinox. When Christianity came to the now countries of England and Germany, the pagan festival was subsumed into the Christian festival that remembered Jesus’ death and resurrection. However, the name Eostre was retained (a form of evangelistic rebranding).  Wherever German or English has gone in the world the name for the season has remained Easter for some 1000+ years.
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However, the non-Germanic Christian world (i.e. Spanish, French, Italian, Russian, Greek, etc) calls the season Pascha or Passover in continuity with the Old Covenant feast when Jesus died and rose. This was the wording of the Church Fathers. While Good Friday, Holy/Passion[1] Week or Lent wasn’t developed in early Christianity until c. 4th century, Passover (Easter) has been celebrated the first Lord’s Day after the lunar Old Covenant Passover since the earliest church period; officially standardized since AD 325.[2] This all makes perfect sense. Jesus was the Passover lamb (1 Cor 5:7), fulfilling the Old Covenant festival of Passover, giving it new meaning for believers and simplifying it under the New Covenant as the Lord’s Supper (Mk 14:22–25; 1 Cor 11:17–34). The weeklong Passover in the Old Testament wasn’t just about remembering God's judgement upon the firstborn passing over those with the blood of a lamb (i.e. Good Friday)  but the Exodus from slavery to new life in the Promised Land. Likewise, the New Covenant Passover remembers the believers' rescue from slavery to sin (Cross) and into new spiritual life (Resurrection).[3]

 To distinguish ourselves from secular and medieval paganism, and unite ourselves to the flow of Scripture, the witness of tradition, we ought to join the rest of the Christian world in calling the season of Easter ‘Passover.’ Passover would then be broken into the two pillar days:

Taken together, Passover remembers the great essence of the Gospel and the promise of the New Covenant, forgiveness of sin and life eternal, of passing over from death to life (Jn 5:24).


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[1] Passion means suffering.

[2] Prior to the Council of Nicea there were two traditions: the churches in Asian Minor followed the Jewish pattern of the 14th of Nissan (lunar), whereas the churches in Palestine, Egypt and Italy followed the first Lord’s Day after the 14th of Nissan (weekly). (Nick Needham, 2000 Years of  Christ's Power, vol. 1 [2016], 80).  As such it is the day of the week and not day of the month that is commemorated. 

[3] Egypt=sin; Passover lamb= Jesus; Red Sea= baptism; wilderness= our life before glory; the Promised Land= the New Heavens and New Earth.

[4] I call it a season vs. a festival or a holiday (holy day) because there is only one holy day commanded under the New Covenant and that is the Lord’s Day.

[5] We are not commanded to observe Good Friday under the New Covenant as we are the weekly Lord’s Day, however, given the weight allotted to the event in Scripture and its integral part in the establishment of the New Covenant, it is warranted.

[6] It is difficult to escape paganism entirely as even our days of the week are named after Roman gods. Good is in the sense of holy or special, because of what is remembered.  

[7] Tertullian, in the 3rd century, said something like, ‘not to be ashamed of calling it Sunday for it was the Day of the Son.’ ​