Why I've Never Been on an Easter Egg Hunt

April 10, 2008

I’ve never been on an Easter-egg hunt.

The Bradford pears are blooming their white linen, the redbuds are dotted with their purple-pink, and the earth is sprouting daffodil-yellow. It must be Spring! I love this time of year, when the earth thaws out and begins to show its colors again.

But I don’t associate the season with Easter or sunrise services or memories of easter-egg hunts, as most Christian-oriented people do. I grew up in a church which, instead, observed the Old-Testament rituals of unleavened bread. We were non-denominational – not Jewish, not Seventh-Day Adventist, not Jehovah’s Witness. But still we spurned the Easter celebration as having pagan origins.

We celebrated the Passover, a commemoration of the ancient time described in Exodus 12, when God struck all the firstborn in Egypt, save for those Israelite homes who had the blood of the lamb on their doorposts. Of course the blood of the lamb was a precursor to Christ’s blood, which would one day be shed to save God’s modern-day people from eternal death.

Let me pause here to add, this is not meant to be a particularly religious or “preachy” piece. I’m certainly not out to convert anyone, or accuse anyone. This is simply a progression of thoughts as I, as an adult, reason, think through, and question a teaching of my childhood.

Because verse 14 of Exodus 12 tells the Israelites to keep this feast “throughout your generations,” “as an everlasting ordinance,” our church followed the instructions in Exodus 12 (and reiterated in chapter 13) to remove leaven from our homes and to eat unleavened bread for seven days. As churchmembers we would do a mad-spring cleaning to “put leaven out of our lives.” Leaven – which is generally found in breads, cakes, piecrusts, cookies, hamburger buns, pizza crusts, crackers, and numerous other common foods – symbolized “sin” at this time of year for us.

When the Israelites fled Egypt (verses 31-40 of Exodus 12), “Egypt” pictured sin, and of course the Israelites were God’s chosen people, so just as the Israelites fled Egypt, we as modern day Christians are to flee sin. And as churchmembers we were to put leaven (“sin”) out of our lives for seven days.

And not just by throwing out all breads, crackers, and cookies from our homes! We went so far as to clean our toasters, because crumbs of leaven lurked in there, too, just as sin can lurk in places in ourselves that we don’t think to look. We were not to eat of anything leavened, at home or anyplace, neither were we to have any leavened products in our house.

This was to occur for seven consecutive days, and generally fell around the time of Easter. I’ll mention here that the Bible makes no mention of easter eggs or bunnies or anything of the sort. Because my church strove to live by God’s Word in every way possible, we did not condone such things and thus, I never hunted easter eggs as a child.

Recently I got this set of oh-so-funny Easter cartoons from my sister-in-law. I forwarded them to many of my friends, including one of our girls who observes the Jewish faith. I asked if the Jewish celebrated Easter -- which I knew they didn't, but sometimes mainstream holidays seep their way into non-mainstream churches.

So of course she replied that they don't; they celebrate the Passover which pictures the Exodus from Egypt. Well, I knew all about that, but it got me to thinking about the Council of Nicaea, which was the big council that decided on which days to celebrate. I needed to understand as an ADULT, and not just a child following my mom’s religion, the truth behind the history of Passover vs. Easter.

I found a section at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea, which describes the transition from the Hebrew Passover to the Christian Easter in a way that I hadn’t thought of before. When I read it, my first thoughts were, they're openly ADMITTING that they changed the day of celebration of the resurrection. Then I realized that they changed the day of the CHRISTIAN holiday -- and the Jews weren't Christians. Our church kept the JEWISH holydays, all the while passing off the “christian" traditions of Easter as "pagan."

This passage helped me realize why there was such disagreement between the days in the first place. The Christians were setting themselves apart from the Jews: ‘The council assumed the task of regulating these differences, in part because some dioceses were determined not to have Christian Passover correspond with the Jewish calendar. "The feast of the resurrection was thenceforth required to be celebrated everywhere on a Sunday, and never on the day of the Jewish passover, but always after the fourteenth of Nisan, on the Sunday after the first vernal full moon. The leading motive for this regulation was opposition to Judaism, which had dishonored the passover by the crucifixion of the Lord." Constantine wrote that: "… it appeared an unworthy thing that in the celebration of this most holy feast we should follow the practice of the Jews, who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are, therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul. … Let us then have nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd; for we have received from our Saviour a different way." Theodoret recorded the Emperor as saying: "It was, in the first place, declared improper to follow the custom of the Jews in the celebration of this holy festival, because, their hands having been stained with crime, the minds of these wretched men are necessarily blinded. … Let us, then, have nothing in common with the Jews, who are our adversaries. … avoiding all contact with that evil way. … who, after having compassed the death of the Lord, being out of their minds, are guided not by sound reason, but by an unrestrained passion, wherever their innate madness carries them. … a people so utterly depraved. … Therefore, this irregularity must be corrected, in order that we may no more have any thing in common with those parricides and the murderers of our Lord. … no single point in common with the perjury of the Jews."’

This made so much sense to me. My church had never explained in quite this way, and it left me undecided. And where did easter eggs and bunnies come from in the first place? I’d been taught relentlessly as a child, that Easter originated from worship of the fertility goddess Ishtar, and that rabbits and eggs were pagan symbols of new life. But could this be documented?

I googled “easter” in search of its origins. A Catholic site, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05224d.htm, mentions this: “ The English term, according to the Ven. Bede relates to Estre, a Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and spring…” The site, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_Bunny, states, “The rabbit as an Easter symbol seems to have its origins in Germany, where it was first mentioned in German writings in the 1500s,” and, “Eggs, like rabbits and hares, are fertility symbols of extreme antiquity.” The goddess Eostre is cited, and following that link, I read that the Benedictine monk Bede associated Eostre and Eostur-monath with the month of April; according to Bede, Eostre’s festival was celebrated in the spring.

Another site documenting the origins of Easter (specifically the Christian Easter vs. the Jewish Passover), echoes this, and goes on to say, “…scholars actually believe that the festival has its roots in a number of pre-Christian faiths, including Pagan and Jewish. For example, historians believe that the word Easter is derived from the Saxon name of the Pagan goddess of spring and fertility, Eastre. The lunar calendar month of April was dedicated to a celebration of Eastre, featuring rituals to mark the vernal equinox and welcome the fertility associated with springtime. Many of these Pagan traditions have been incorporated into Christianity's celebration of Easter today. The Easter bunny and Easter eggs, for instance, are both Pagan symbols of fertility.” (http://www.holidays.net/easter/story.htm)

(By the way, I googled Ishtar, and she seems to be a completely different goddess than the one for whom Easter is named).

I’m sure there are numerous more sites I could research. But what I’ve found is enough to believe that yes, the celebration we know today as “Easter” does indeed have non-christian origins. The controversy of Passover vs. Easter did indeed divide Christ’s early followers. But does this mean that Christians are not to celebrate easter but to keep Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread, as outlined in the Old Testament? No, I don’t believe so.

What I do believe is that there is no “one size fits all.” I believe in questioning convention and traditions. We each have to make our own decisions based on facts, and live as we are convicted to believe.