EASTER AND RELATED TRADITIONS

Deuteronomy 12:30-32

Each spring the excitement of Easter fills the air. Many churches prepare special Easter programs about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Can we find any historical or biblical record of Jesus or His disciples keeping Easter or teaching it? Did Jesus or His apostles instruct His followers to worship His resurrection at sunrise on Easter Sunday?

If Easter were not sanctioned by Jesus or instituted by His apostles, then where did Easter come from? The New Testament does not mention an Easter celebration. The popular belief is that Christ was crucified on a Friday and rose on a Sunday. But neither of these suppositions is supported by the biblical record.

Catholics are strictly required to believe that Friday was the day of the crucifixion and that they have to abstain from meat, substituting fish in its place! Many calendars are thus marked with fish on Fridays, restaurants usually offer special fish dinners on this day. This Friday fish eating is supposedly to commemorate the Friday death of Christ. Many doctrines and rites have been adopted into the Roman Catholic Church from paganism; it is not surprising that attempts were also made to “Christianize” certain popular pagan days and their accompanying customs. This has been the case with the Friday and fish eating practice. The Bible never associates Friday with fish. However, there is evidence of this basic idea among the philosophies of the pagans!

The word “Friday” comes from the name of “Freya”, who was regarded as the goddess of peace, joy, and fertility by the ancient pagans. Moreover, as the symbol of her fertility, the fish was regarded as being sacred to her! The fish has from very early times been a symbol of fertility. It was a well-known symbol of fertility among the ancient Babylonians, as well as the Assyrians, Phoenicians, the Chinese, and other nations. The word “fish” comes from the word “dag” implying increase or fecundity. The reason the fish was used as a symbol of fertility is seen by the fact that it has a very high reproduction rate. From ancient times, the fish has been a symbol of sexual fertility, and thus was associated with the Goddess of fertility, Freya-Friday!

The Romans called the Goddess of sexual fertility by the name Venus. Moreover, it is from the name of the Goddess Venus (Veneris) that we get our modern word Friday. Friday was regarded as her sacred day, because it was believed that the planet Venus ruled the first hour of Friday. To make the significance complete, the fish was also regarded as being sacred to her.

In view of these things concerning Friday being named after the Goddess of sexual fertility, Friday being the day that from olden times was regarded as her sacred day, and since the fish was her sacred symbol, it seems like more than a mere coincidence that to this day, Catholics are taught that Friday is a special day, a day of abstinence from meat, a day to eat fish!

The word “Easter” appears once in the King James Bible (Acts 12:4). The original word that is here translated “Easter” is “pascha” which is the Greek word for Passover. And has no connection with the English word “Easter.” The KJV Bible is the only version that has inserted the word Easter instead of Passover in this text. It is not a Christian expression. This word comes from the name of a Pagan Goddess, the goddess of spring. Easter is a more modern form of Ishtar or Astarte. The name of the Spring Festival, “Easter”, is definitely paganistic. 

Many traditional customs and observances of this season originated in paganism also. A good example of this can be seen in the well-known usage of the Easter egg.  Eggs are colored, hid, hunted, and eaten on Easter. Where did this custom of using eggs at this season begin? Did the Christians of the New Testament dye eggs? Do eggs have anything to do with Christ or his resurrection? Such usage is completely foreign to the Bible.

The egg was a sacred symbol among the Babylonians! They believed an old fable about an egg of wondrous size, which was supposed to have fallen from heaven into the Euphrates River. From this marvelous egg, according to the story, the Goddess Astarte (Easter) was hatched. Therefore, the Easter egg symbolizes the Goddess Easter. From Babylon, humanity was scattered to the various parts of the earth and with them, they took the idea of the Mystic Egg. Thus, we find the egg as a sacred symbol among many nations.

The Encyclopedia Britannica says, “The egg as a symbol of fertility and of renewed life goes back to the ancient Egyptians and Persians, who had also the custom of coloring and eating eggs during their spring festival.” None can dispute the fact that the egg as a sacred symbol has been a part of pagan festivities from ancient times.

How did this custom come to be associated with Christianity? Its adoption into the Roman “church” is but further evidence of the great compromise that was made with paganism, a compromise to gain popularity with both sides! Apostate leaders attempted to find some similarity between the pagan custom and some Christian event; so in this case, it was suggested that as the chick comes out of the egg, so Christ came out of the tomb! Thus, church leaders told the people that the egg was a symbol of the resurrection of Christ! Pope Paul V even appointed a prayer in connection with the egg! “Bless, o Lord, we beseech thee, this thy creature of eggs, that it may become wholesome sustenance unto thy servants, eating it in remembrance of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Therefore, another “mixture” passed into Modern Babylon and has in turn become a part of our present day customs.

Now even as the fish was associated with the Goddess as a sign of sexual fertility, so also, the egg was but another symbol of fertility. When we think about it, it is tragic that such vile symbolism came to be associated with Christianity, when in reality such things have no connection with true Christianity at all! Just as the fish and eggs were fertility symbols of the Mystery religion, so also is the Easter rabbit a symbol of fertility and of the renewal of life. The rabbit is associated with the moon. The Egyptian word for rabbit is “UM” which means “open” and “period”, the rabbit is associated with the idea of periodicity, both lunar and human and with the beginning of new life in both the young man and young woman.

The common assumption is that Easter sunrise services honor Christ because He rose on Easter morning just as the sun was coming up! We know from the Bible that the resurrection did not occur at sunrise (John 20:1).  Since our Lord’s resurrection did not take place at dawn, then surely this is no basis for sunrise services.

There was a type of sunrise service that was a part of old pagan customs connected with sun worship! We are not implying that Christians today literally worship the sun when they have sunrise services. What we are saying is that such practices on Easter morning are an obvious mixture of paganism with Christianity.

In the Old Testament, Gods people went into the Babylonian captivity because they mixed sun-worship rites into their worship. God showed this to the prophet Ezekiel; “And he brought me into the inner court of the Lord's house, and, behold, at the door of the temple of the Lord, between the porch and the altar, were about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the Lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east (Ez. 8:16). In this verse we see people that had known God, yet they allowed this mixture of sun worship to enter in and defile them.

The name “Easter” comes from the name of the pagan goddess of SPRING, and this was the time of her festival. She was regarded as the goddess of the rising light in the east, as the very word “East-er” shows. The English Easter is at all events connected with the east and sunrise. Thus the dawn of the sun in the “east”, the name “Easter”, and the spring season are all connected.

Since Jesus, in reality did rise; and since his resurrection was in the spring of the year, though slightly earlier than the pagan festival of olden times, it was not too hard for the church of the fourth century (now greatly departed from the Apostolic Faith anyway) to merge the pagan spring festival into Christianity, attaching the various phases of it to Christ. In this way, both sides were coaxed into the professing “church.” In speaking of this merger, the “Encyclopedia Britannica” says: “Christianity...incorporated in its celebration of the great Christian feast day many of the heathen rites and customs of the spring festival”, the ancient pagan festival!”

The evidence then is clear: today’s observance of Easter is not purely Christian. Its customs are plainly a mixture, a mixture of paganism and Christianity. Some feel, however, that we can take these various customs and use them to honor Christ. After all, it is reasoned, do not most Christians think of Christ at this season? Though the pagans worshipped the sun toward the east, could not we have sunrise services to honor the resurrection of Christ, even though this is not the time of day that he rose? Moreover, even though the egg was used by pagans, can’t we continue its use and pretend it symbolizes the large rock that was in front of the tomb? In other words, some brothers feel we can take all of these pagan beliefs and ideas, and instead of applying them to the false gods as the heathen did, we will use them to glorify Christ. At first glance, this might seem like good reasoning. However, this idea of adding pagan customs into the worship of the true God is utterly and absolutely condemned in the Bible! (Dt. 12:30-32).  Plainly then, our God does not want us to add anything to his worship. He does not want us to use customs and rites that the heathen used, even though we might claim to use them to honor Him.

Having adopted the pagan spring festival of Ishtar or Easter into the fallen church, it was but a natural step to adopt the old “fast” that preceded the Spring Festival also. Today, this period of forty days before Easter is known as lent. In olden times, these forty days were observed with weeping, fasting, and self-chastisement for Tammuz, to gain anew his favor so he would come forth from the underworld, end winter, and cause spring to begin.

The forty days’ abstinence of lent was known among the Devil-worshippers of Koordistan who inherited the spring observance from the Babylonians. Such an observance was also known among the pagan Mexicans who observed “a solemn fast of forty days in honor of the sun.” 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. To the world, that does not understand the “mystery” of all of this, they think that lent and days of “abstinence” are of Christian origin and are of great virtue. However, in reality, just the opposite is the teaching of the Bible and reason.