Most Christians consider Easter to be a sacred and joyous celebration of Christ’s resurrection. But what about the claim that Easter and its accompanying traditions originated from a pagan spring celebration?
In his treatise On the Reckoning of Time, eighth-century English monk the Venerable Bede proposed that the word Easter comes from the name of a pagan goddess: “Eosturmonath has a name which is now translated ‘Paschal month’, and which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month.” Modern pagans latched onto this idea, and further associated Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring and fertility, with Ostara, a Germanic goddess of spring.
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