by Rev. Joda Collins
If your Easter is about rabbits and eggs then your Easter is a pagan holiday. If your Easter is about reflecting on and celebrating the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the tomb then your Easter is a godly holiday (holy-day) whether you call it Easter, Sunrise Day, Resurrection Sunday, Up From the Grave He Arose Day or anything else.
If you want to call it Easter because the word Easter comes from the word East and East is the direction of sunrise and the tomb of Jesus was discovered empty at sunrise; plus in older times the word Eastern was often spoken and written as Easter, then call the celebration of Jesus' empty tomb Easter. Some think the origin of the word Easter for the celebration of Jesus rising from the dead came to us in just that way. No one knows for sure.
If you think the word Easter originated from the ancient pagan goddess of sex, fertility and war called Ishtar (aka Eostre, Astarte and Ashtoreth) and you would rather not identify the resurrection of Jesus with a pagan goddess with a like-sounding name, then call it by another name. The word Easter may have come from this association. No one knows for sure.
I read somewhere that the word Easter might be a derivative of the word Passover as it is written in another language (other than Hebrew). I do not know if that is true or not and I do not much care. I certainly do not care enough to invest my valuable time trying to find out if another language might translate Passover into a word that sounds or looks like the word Easter, especially since the best conclusion can be that Easter MIGHT come from this association although no one really knows. Easter and Passover are celebrated at the the same time of the year for good reasons.
If you celebrate the resurrection of the Lord from His tomb that is a holy-day no matter what you call it. If you give me a suitcase full of one-hundred dollar bills and insist on calling it cash, dinero, moolah, dough, bucks, legal tender or greenbacks -- that is fine with me. I will take it with a smile and a hearty thank you. Call it what you want. The important thing is that I get the money! Call the celebration of Jesus rising from the tomb whatever you want, just be sure to celebrate the rising of Jesus from the tomb because without that event we would all pass from this life to an eternal Hell.
Is Easter a pagan holiday? Maybe for you. Not for me.
Rev. Joda Collins
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/jodacollins
I make no claim that anyone else agrees with me.
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