The Origin of “Easter”

By Jim Staley

In the ancient heathen world there were gods and goddesses for
everything. There were gods for the sun, moon, trees, animals, love,
and so on. And as Paul found out, there was even a god called the
“unknown god”, just in case they missed any. Some of these gods
were at one time real human beings and after death were glorified to
the status of a god or goddess. The people did not necessarily
worship the sun or the moon but the god that was “in charge” of the
sun or the moon, etc… Even the great Caesars were given god-like
status even while some were still alive!

The greatest of all of the gods throughout all of history and all
civilizations was virtually always the “sun-god”. And the first god
worshipped as the god of the sun was Nimrod, the very same Nimrod
from the book of Genesis. And from the book of Genesis we learn
that Nimrod was a great grandson of Noah, an incredible hunter and
became a mighty king on the earth. Genesis also records for us in
chapter 10 that he was responsible for building the kingdoms of Babel
and Nineveh along with many other cities. But his most famous
accomplishment was the “brilliant” idea to build a “tower whose top
would reach the heavens”. This in turn provoked the LORD to come
down out of heaven to confuse their language and scatter them over
the face of the earth. This infamous tower became known as the
“Tower of Babel”. Nimrod was said to be the most powerful ruler of all
time and when he died, Babylonian legend says that he ascended
into the heavens and he became the sun-god. The name that the
people of his time would call him would be “Baal” which means “lord”.
The wife that he left behind was named Semiramis, who would now
become the “Queen of Heaven” since she was the wife of the sun-
god Baal.

Years later Semiramis became pregnant. She declared that she had
become pregnant by the rays of the sun of her deceased husband,
Nimrod (Baal), and nine months later she gave birth to a son in which
she gave the name “Tammuz”. Because of the god-like status of his
late father Nimord, baby Tammuz was quickly haled to be the
reincarnation of his father Nimrod. Tammuz, like his father, also
became a mighty hunter on the earth. But, when he was forty years of
age, he was killed by a wild boar on one of his hunting expeditions.
Because he was revered to be the reincarnated sun-god, his death
brought great despair upon the people of Babel. So, they set aside
forty days of weeping and fasting for Tammuz each year in the Spring
to commemorate each year that he was alive. (This tradition has
been passed down through the ages to the church and is where we
get the forty days of fasting before Easter Sunday. This is where the
Catholic original tradition of “Lent” came from until Catholic leadership
changed the origination to the 40 days of fasting that Jesus did in the
wilderness.) After the forty days of weeping, they would kill a wild
boar (getting back at the boar that killed Tammuz) and eat the ham
on the first Sunday after the Spring Equinox (This is where the
tradition of eating ham on Easter Sunday came from). Also as a side
note, one of the ancient statues of Mary holding baby Jesus in the
Vatican is actually a REAL statue of Semiramis holding baby
Tammuz! The Catholic Church just changed the names to Mary and
Jesus!

Many years later, as the legend continues, Tammuz’s mother

Semiramis dies and ascends into heaven. But as the luck of the
Babylonian legend would have it, when she ascended into the
heavens, the gods sent her back down to earth in a giant egg at
sunrise on the first Sunday after the vernal equinox (first day of
Spring). She landed in the Euphrates River, the egg busted open and
she turned a bird into an egg laying rabbit. (Have you ever wondered
where the Easter Bunny and Easter Eggs came from? Well, now you
know.) Eggs were very symbolic of many pagan religions as many
believed that the earth itself came from a giant egg. Furthermore, the
rabbit was looked upon as the most fertile animal on earth and the
egg was also viewed as a symbol of fertility and new life. This is why
these two symbols were attributed to the new “Queen of Heaven”,
Ishtar.

It is also important to note that the process of deifying someone

included renaming the individual after they had died. Many times they
would be given a name that represented whatever they were going to
be the god of. The new name of Semiramus according to the
Babylonians was Ishtar, the god of fertility and the god of the East, or
sunrise. Later, the Phoenicians and the Greeks in their language
called her Astarte, the Zidonians called her Ashtaroth (Judges 2:13
“And they forsook the LORD and served Baal and Ashtaroth.”), the
Philistines in the time of Saul kept the name Ishtar and the Celtics
called her Eostra.

(Judges 10:6, “And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of
the LORD, and served Baal and Ashtaroth, and the gods of Syria,
and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the
children of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines, and forsook the
LORD, and served Him not.”)

But all of these names were referring to the same goddess: the bare-
breasted fertility goddess of the Spring. And guess what the
Anglicization of the Babylonian name “Ishtar” is? You guessed it---
Easter.

The Bible does mention most of the various names of Easter, but
does not go in great detail of how she was worshipped. So we are
forced to go to history books, ancient extra biblical sources and
ancient legends that describe these subjects in more detail. For
example, Paul mentions the “Circumcision Party” in one of his letters.
We don’t get a clear picture of who these people were, so we must
rely on other historical sources from that time period to describe more
accurately who the Circumcision Party was in order to correctly
interpret that scripture. In the same manner, if God tells us not to
worship Him the way that people used to worship Baal, (Deut. 12:29-
32), and not to even mention the names of their gods in connection
with Him (Ex. 23:13), then it is very vital to know HOW people
worshiped Baal so that we do not adopt those same practices in our
worship of the true God, Yahweh. Scripture does not give us all of the
details of how the people worshipped Baal and Easter. The reason is
that the people to whom the scriptures were written to already knew
all of the details. So because we are thousands of years removed
from their time period and culture, we rely on what the Bible does tell
us, but we also rely heavily on historians like Josephus and others
that paint the pictures of what each subject looked like in vivid detail.
Even a quick look into what Catholic historians say about this subject
is revealing:

“The reasons for celebrating our major feasts when we do are many
and varied. In general, however, it is true that many of them have at
least an indirect connection with the pre-Christian [pagan] feasts
celebrated about the same time of year — feasts centering around
the harvest, the rebirth of the sun at the winter solstice (now Dec. 21,
but Dec. 25 in the old Julian calendar), the renewal of nature in
spring, and so on.”
Source: The New Question Box - Catholic Life for the Nineties,
copyright 1988 by John J. Dietzen, M.A., S.T.L., ISBN 0-940518-01-5
(paperback), published by Guildhall Publishers, Peoria Illinois,
61651., page 554.

Even the Oxford English dictionary defines “Easter” as “The name of

a goddess whose festival was celebrated at the vernal equinox…
originally known as the dawn goddess, the goddess of fertility.”

So let’s get back to the story. So, as sun worship (Baal worship)
increased and became world wide, so did the worship of his wife, the
“Queen of Heaven”, Easter. We are told through this Babylonian
legend that every year on “Easter Sunday” at sunrise, the priests of
Easter would impregnate young virgins on the altar of Baal. Then, the
next year, they would take the now three month old babies and
sacrifice them on the altar on Easter Sunday at the sunrise service.
They would then take the eggs of Easter and dye the eggs in the
blood of the sacrificed infants. Here is an interesting quote that I
found on the internet. “Red is a traditional color for dying eggs…Red
dyed eggs are offered to the god and goddess of the bed in China.”
Interestingly enough, although pastel colors are mostly used here in
America, red is the most popular color that Easter eggs are dyed
worldwide. Even the official White House Easter egg is made of ruby
red glass. This tradition finds its roots all the way back to the dying of
Easter eggs in the blood of sacrificed children. You may not have
wanted to learn that last factual root of where the tradition of dying
Easter eggs came from. Neither did I. But in the end, I would hope
that all true believers would rather know the truth about these things,
rather than do something without knowledge of why we do them or
where they came from.

How did the Resurrection become associated with Easter’s Sunday?

One author on the subject writes, “Around the second century A.D.,
Christian missionaries traveled among the Teutonic tribes north of
Rome. Whenever possible, they converted the tribes of northern
Europe realizing that the time of the crucifixion of Jesus roughly
coincided with the Pagan springtime celebrations of Easter…Since it
would have been suicide for the very early Christian converts to
celebrate the biblical holy days (Passover) alongside the pagan
observances that were already set in place, the missionaries cleverly
devised a plan. In order to save the lives of their converts, they would
allow them to continue to celebrate their pagan feasts, but to do so in
a Christian manner. Since the Easter festival to celebrate spring
coincided with the time of the Christian observance of the
resurrection (Passover) of Christ, this crossover was achieved
smoothly.”

And so for the purpose of making it easier for the pagan gentiles to
convert to Christianity, they were allowed to keep the festival of
Easter as long as they tied it to the resurrection of Christ. But the
entire early church of the New Testament for over a hundred years
celebrated the actual week of Passover as the time that Jesus died
and rose from the dead as the scriptures say. It is interesting to note
at this point that this author says that it would "have been suicide" for
the new converts to keep the Biblical Holy days because they were
so surrounded by paganism. By even mentioning this fact, he is by
logical deduction, implying that Christians outside of those pagan
social pressures, DID keep the Biblical Holy days such as Passover
as Jesus commanded. Unfortunately, man seems to always
compromise and cave in to social pressures, rather than stand up for
the truth through faith.

As you will see by the end of this article, the main reason why the
Christian Church at large celebrates Easter instead of the Biblical
celebration of Passover that Jesus and his followers observed is
because more and more pagan Gentiles were coming into the
church, rising to leadership, and removing the things that Jesus and
his followers did that they thought were “too Jewish” and would
replace them would celebrations that they were more accustomed to.
It is important to remember that the pagan Gentiles that were
converting to Christianity hated the Jews and did not want to have
anything to do with them or their traditions…even if their traditions
came from the Bible itself. For the sake of adding more converts,
(instead of the biblical creating disciples method), the “Church” began
to compromise the footsteps and teachings of the first century
disciples.

Through all of this historical change though, there has always

remained a remnant that retained the true meaning and traditions of
the Bible. Even by the fourth century there were still many believers
that still celebrated the resurrection on Passover like the early church
before them. The Roman Emperor Constantine said at the council of
Nicea in 325A.D., “It appears that the churches of Syria and
Mesopotamia continues to follow the custom of the Jews, and
celebrated Easter on the fourteenth day of the moon whether falling
on Sunday or not. All the other churches observed the solemnity on
Sunday only.” (The “fourteenth day of the moon” was how the Bible
told the early believers to calculate Passover.) It was also at the
Council of Nicea that Constantine made it law that the celebration of
the resurrection of Christ was to be done on Easter Sunday: “…This
subject having been discussed, it was decreed to celebrate Easter on
the same day…(Sunday) …which was the practice of Rome.”

Constantine was a huge sun worshipper before he supposedly

converted to Christianity along with the rest of the citizens of Rome.
And celebrating Easter on the first Sunday after the spring equinox
was already “the practice of Rome”. Constantine went on to finally
declare for all time, “…We should perpetuate to all future ages the
celebration of this rite.” And so it went down in history on that day, in
the beginnings of the Roman Catholic Church, that anyone that
celebrated the resurrection on any other day would be
excommunicated, severely punished or even killed. Not much has
changed since that proclamation by Constantine almost seventeen
hundred years ago. Sure, there was a Protestant Reformation. But for
the most part, most Christian churches operate in some way shape or
form EXACTLY how their Catholic predecessors taught them without
virtually any examination of doctrine and traditions to verify their
biblical accuracy. For too long we have just done things because we
have always done them and they appear to have no harm. But, is it
possible that we are missing out on something that carries incredible
blessings and significance for both us and our children?

So, we have come to the point in our journey on this subject that I
believe we must address what you are probably thinking: “Those
facts about the origin of Easter are interesting, but that is not what
Easter means to me.” Before we answer this common response, we
must first answer the following question: Can we “Christianize” pagan
holidays and worship our God using the things that the pagans used
to worship their gods? Before going to the scriptures, let me answer
by using a simple example of how a husband relates to his wife.
Should a husband love his wife the way that HE wants to love her?
Or should he love her the way that SHE wants to be loved. Over the
lifetime of my marriage I have learned that my wife does not want me
to solve her problems as much as she wants me to listen to them. I
still do not understand why she wants to be loved like this because if
it were me it seems more logical to just solve the problem and things
instantly get better. The problem is that it is NOT me. It is about HER.
Whether I understand it or not, it is my responsibility to serve her in
the way that most pleases her. She will not be fulfilled any other way.
In the same way, are we to think that the Creator of the Universe will
accept our worship in whatever form we want to give it just because
our hearts are “sincere”? The condition of our heart and motives
ONLY matter as we are obeying Him in the way that pleases HIM.
Obedience must come first. Otherwise, what would be the point in
even sharing the gospel? Virtually everyone is sincere and thinks that
they are pleasing God. The reason why we share the gospel is
because we can only please God THROUGH faith and obedience to
Jesus Christ (John 14:6). We know that they cannot just choose any
old way to worship Yahweh. But for some reason, we do not apply
the same logic to our own beliefs and traditions. \

Many might say it doesn't really matter if we celebrate Easter using

pagan traditions, especially since we use them to celebrate the
resurrection of Jesus. What do the Scriptures have to say about this?
Can we “Christianize” pagan holidays and worship our God using the
things that the pagans used to worship their gods? Let’s take a look
at the book of Deuteronomy:

Deut. 12:29 says, "When the LORD your God cuts off from before
you the nations which you go to dispossess, and you displace them
and dwell in their land, 30 "take heed to yourself that you are not
ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from before you,
and that you do not inquire after their gods, saying, ‘How did these
nations serve their gods? I also will do likewise.’ 31 "You shall not
worship the LORD your God in that way; for every abomination to the
LORD which He hates they have done to their gods; for they burn
even their sons and daughters in the fire to their gods. 32 "Whatever I
command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not add to it nor take
away from it. "You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way”

The Israelites were engrained in Egypt to worship gods through man-

made things and ideas. Yahweh knew that they would be inclined to
want to take the idols of the nations and use them and their traditions
to worship Him, so He made it EXTREMELY clear that He wanted His
people to be “set apart”, a “holy priesthood”(I Pet. 2:5), to “not learn
the ways of the heathens” (Jer. 10:2), and to “NOT WORSHIP THE
LORD GOD IN THAT WAY”. What way? The same ways and
traditions that the pagans used to worship their gods.

Now, at first glance it is tempting to read into these scriptures that

God is telling them not to worship other gods, but that is NOT what
He is saying. Verse 31 does not say, “You shall not worship other
gods.” It says, “You shall not worship the LORD your God in THAT
way…” These were people that were already prone, from the golden
calf experience, to worship the true God through “unapproved”
measures. Man seems to be bent in inventing and creating new ways
to do everything and worshipping seems to be no exception. The
question though, seems to be whether or not we have the rite to
invent, change, add or subtract from the things that He has already
approved. It is hard for us finite humans to remember that HE is the
one being worshipped and not us. The last verse in that chapter is
worth repeating:

32 “Whatever I command you, be careful to observe it; you shall not

add to it nor take away from it.

One author wrote on this verse, “In this brief clause he teaches that
no other service of God is lawful, except that of which He has testified
His approval in His word, and that obedience is as it were the mother
of piety; By forbidding the addition, or diminishing of anything, he
plainly condemns as illegitimate whatever men invent of their own
imagination; whence it follows that they, who in worshipping God are
guided by any rule save that which He Himself has prescribed.”
It is our job to worship God the way that He wants to be worshipped,
and NOT the way we want to worship Him. Let’s use another
example: Let's say there was a guy named Joe that before he was
married to a different girl, dated a girl for five years that had a 1969
red mustang. Furthermore, Joe had gone on hundreds of dates with
this girl in this mustang. On top of that, let’s say Joe’s new wife knew
all about this mustang and Joe's old girlfriend. How excited would
Joe's wife be if he decided to buy her a 1969 red mustang for their
first wedding anniversary? Not very excited I would imagine. And if
that wasn’t enough, Joe decided that he was so used to celebrating
his girlfriend”vs birthday on December 25th, that he decided to
change his wife’s birthday to December 25th thinking that she
wouldn’t mind since after all, he was doing his best to show his love
toward her. Given the above scenario, I think it might be his last
anniversary to say the least. But, on behalf of Joe, at this point he
doesn’t know any better because she hasn’t slapped him yet with the
truth of how she feels! But, after the shock of learning this new truth,
Joe will now be responsible to pray and ask God to help him “sell the
mustang” regardless of how much it meant to him or the memories
that are associated with it.

No matter how pure Joe’s motives were in how he wanted to please

her, she did not want to be pleased “in that way”. In the same way,
we cannot say, “That’s not what Easter means to me”, because WE
are not the ones receiving the worship. The only thing that matters is
what our God YAHWEH thinks! And I hope by now that it has become
very clear what God thinks about using things, ideas and traditions
that were formally used by pagans to worship their gods, for the
purpose of worshipping the one true God. It does not matter if times
have changed and Easter does not mean to us what it did 2000 years
ago.
The facts are that virtually everything that is associated with Easter
can be traced back to pagan ritualistic ceremonies that Yahweh
hated. How do you think God feels looking down from Heaven and
seeing us celebrate a day with the name of a pagan goddess,
passing out stuffed Easter bunnies to the children that are picking up
dyed Easter eggs, eating Easter ham on Easter Sunday morning
while we attend Easter sunrise services on the exact same day that
all of the sun-worshippers did for thousands of years!? We each have
to answer that question privately in our own relationship with God.
But, it is my belief that it disgusts him to see his people mix
(compromise) past abominations in with the resurrection of His Son.
And on top of that we KNOW that the tradition comes from a pagan
background (every dictionary and encyclopedia admits this), and yet
we justify it by saying that “it doesn’t mean that to ME”. Have we
fallen so far from truth that we put more of an emphasis on what WE
think than what God Almighty says? But then again, that is just my
belief. Each of us will have to come to our own conclusions on the
matter.

I must admit that the first time I came across this truth, I rejected it, on
the account that I could not believe that for over 1700 years the
“Christian” church would be teaching its followers to do something
that God doesn’t approve of. But as my passion for truth and my
desire to serve Him grew stronger, I could not deny the facts any
longer. Either I was going to honor God in the ways that HE chooses
or the ways in which I choose. God has told us how He wants us to
worship Him and we are not “to add or take away” from those
instructions. Originally the Spring Feast of Passover was replaced by
the Roman Church for Easter. I believe it is time to re-replace Easter
with what Jesus, the disciples and Paul tell us to keep: Passover. As
foreign as it might sound to keep Passover instead of Easter,
(because most of us have been brought up in churches that have
adopted “Roman Catholic” holidays and traditions), it is time that we
put our preconceived biases and emotions aside and call bible things
by bible names and do bible things in bible ways. We keep SAYING
that we want to be like the early church. Well, the early Christians
kept Passover for almost three hundred years until it was outlawed by
Constantine in 325 A.D. We see “WWJD” everywhere. What WOULD
Jesus Do? I think that it is a safe assumption that He would most
definitely not celebrate Easter, but Passover, like he instructed us to
do. Besides, Passover, like the other six Biblical Holy Days are all
about the Messiah! Every one of them are prophetic and forecast
details about His first coming and His second! Each one has
tremendous symbolic teaching tools for us and especially our children
that teach deep spiritual principles for out lives. For example, have
you ever wondered why it was so significant that Jesus said, “This is
my body and this is my blood”? The answer is because up until this
point, for the past 1200 years, the Jewish people had celebrated the
Passover as a remembrance of the leaving of Egypt and at that point
in the supper, the head of each household would hold up the bread
and thank God in Heaven for providing for them bread from the earth.
But, this time was different. Jesus changed the age old ceremony in
that one sentence. The bread was to now signify his body and the
wine his blood that would usher in a New Covenant. He told us to
now celebrate the Passover in remembrance of being freed from sin
and that He is now the Passover Lamb that we are to remember.
Luke 22:7 says, “Then came the Day of Unleavened Bread, when the
Passover lamb must be killed.”, and 1 Cor. 5:7, “…For indeed Christ,
our Passover, was sacrificed for us.” And this lamb which had been
killed and sacrificed for thousands of years as a rehearsal for the
atonement of the sins of Israel was now going to be this day, the
“lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” John 1:29. Or
how about the 3 pieces of unleavened bread (like crackers) that are
wrapped in linen that are pierced with holes and have stripes? The
middle piece is broken and hidden somewhere in the house for all the
children to find. This represents the body of Messiah that was broken
and pierced for us and hidden for 3 days. We personally take the
other half of the broken piece and wrap each piece in linen and write
a child’s name on it in red ink signifying that Jesus paid for their sins
personally. Then we hide all the pieces throughout the house and all
the children go looking for their name and whoever finds the middle
piece gets a special prize. What a wonderful teaching tool! The entire
dinner is filled with deep, spiritual symbolism and teaching tools for
the whole family and it all points and is centered around the Messiah!
Isn’t that what we as believers are really trying to do anyway…put
focus and emphasis on the death and resurrection of our Messiah
and teach our children the same? Why not use the tools that God
gave His people so long ago that are from Him? Does He not know
what we need to remember and properly teach our children? Why
celebrate the resurrection of the Son of God using things that came
from man when we can utilize the very things that came from Yahweh
Himself that were created for our blessing and benefit?

My Final Hurdle

The last hurdle that I had to get over in my own mind was that I
thought that Passover was “Jewish”. Little did I know that was only
what I had been taught and that idea is not found in scripture. I had
presumed that they were Jewish because they were the only ones
that seemed to keep them! But God said that these were HIS Holy
Days and if anyone wanted to be a part of His Covenant and be a
part of the “Chosen People”, they would have to play by His rules:

Le 23:2 Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them,
Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be
holy convocations, even these are My feasts.

Numbers 9:14 “If an alien sojourns among you and observes the
Passover to the LORD, according to the statute of the Passover and
according to its ordinance, so he shall do; you shall have one statute,
both for the alien and for the native of the land.'"

Final Thoughts

We are all on our own journey in our relationship and our walk with
Him. In my journey into these things back in 2002, I only sought out to
find where the Easter Bunny came from and “Holy Cow” (no pun
intended), I ended up here! Jesus said to know the truth and the truth
will set you free. And there is something very freeing in giving up
traditions that God does not approve of and replacing them with the
things that He has. In a way, I feel reconnected to the early Christians
that chose to serve God only in the ways that He wanted to be
served. Celebrating Passover instead of Easter has empowered me
to teach my family age old truths about the Messiah in the same way
that the Apostles did with their children. It has caused us to grow
closer to Him. In short…it has changed us. Doing things His way has
changed…me.

May you be blessed on YOUR journey as you seek to follow Him in

everything that you do.

Jim Staley
Passion for Truth Ministries