ENCYCLOPEDIA: Easter today is an annual festival of the Catholic Church claiming to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the principal feast of the Christian year. It is celebrated on a Sunday on varying dates between March 22 and April 25 and is therefore called a movable feast. The dates of several other ecclesiastical festivals, extending over a period between Septuagesima Sunday (the ninth Sunday before Easter) and the first Sunday of Advent, are fixed in relation to the date of Easter.E
Connected with the observance of Easter are the 40-day penitential season of Lent, beginning on Ash Wednesday and concluding at midnight on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter Sunday; Holy Week, commencing on Palm Sunday, including Good Friday, the day of the crucifixion, and terminating with Holy Saturday; and the Octave of Easter, extending from Easter Sunday through the following Sunday. During the Octave of Easter in early Christian times, the newly baptized wore white garments, white being the liturgical color of Easter and signifying light, purity, and joy.
Pre-Christian Tradition: Easter embodies many Pre-Christian traditions. The origin of its name is unknown. Scholars, however, accepting the derivation proposed by the 8th-century English scholar St. Bede, believe it probably comes from Ēastre, the Anglo-Saxon name of a Teutonic goddess of spring and fertility, to whom was dedicated a month corresponding to April. Her festival was celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox; traditions associated with the festival survive in the Easter rabbit, a symbol of fertility, and in colored Easter eggs, originally painted with bright colors to represent the sunlight of spring, and used in Easter-egg rolling contests or given as gifts.
To my knowledge, the term Easter only appears in English in the Authorized Version King James Bible of 1611. The first form of the word was used by Tyndale in his translation of the transliterated Latin Vulgate. Modern scholars claim that the translators of the King James Bible included the word Easter to pay tribute to Tyndale. If this is true, which it isn’t, it would require that all of the 54 official translators (plus all of the nu-numbered scholars that contributed to the work), comprised in 3 different Companies, in 3 separate geographical locations, all (100 %) conspired to intentionally violate the mandate of the King, discard the rules of translation, nullify Bancroft’s Rules to Be Observed in the Translation of the Bible, and put their life and reputation in peril … just to sneak an ‘Easter egg’ into their work. This claim is simply an attempt to cast doubt on the veracity of the Authorized Version King James Bible of 1611. The claim is fallacy!
In fact, Easter existed prior to Jesus Christ. There is only one mention of Easter in Scripture, and it has nothing to do with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Acts 12:1-4 Now about that time Herod the king stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the church. [2]And he killed James the brother of John with the sword. [3]And because he saw it pleased the Jews, he proceeded further to take Peter also. (Then were the days of unleavened bread.) [4]And when he had apprehended him, he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.
Such festivals, and the stories and legends that explain their origin, were common in ancient religions. A Greek legend tells of the return of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, goddess of the earth, from the underworld to the light of day; to the ancient Greeks, her return symbolized the resurrection of life in the spring after the desolation of winter. Many ancient peoples shared similar legends. The Phrygians believed that their omnipotent deity went to sleep at the time of the winter solstice, and they performed ceremonies with music and dancing at the spring equinox to awaken him. The modern-Christian festival of Easter, introduced by the Catholic Church, embodies a number of converging traditions and claim that it has to do with the resurrection of Christ.
The Jews now regard Easter as a new feature of the Passover festival. It is important to note that the Jews don’t believe that Jesus Christ is their promised Messiah as foretold by the prophets, and therefore do not associate Easter with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Dating of Easter: According to Scripture, Christ was crucified on the eve of Passover and 3-days later rose from the dead. There is no Scriptural evidence that the true Christians ever celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Today, it is celebrated immediately following the Passover festival, which, according to Israel’s Babylonian lunar calendar, fell on the evening of the full moon (the 14th day in the month of Nisan, the first month of the year); by their reckoning, Easter, from year to year, fell on different days of the week.
Gentiles that claim to be Christians, through the teaching of the Catholic Church, however, wished to celebrate it on the first day of the week, Sunday; by their method, Easter occurred on the same day of the week, but from year to year it fell on different dates.
An important historical result of the difference in reckoning the date of Easter was that the Christian churches in the East observed Easter according to the date of the Passover festival. The churches of the West celebrated Easter on a Sunday.
Rulings of the Council of Nicaea on the Date of Easter:Constantine I, Roman emperor, convened the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. The council unanimously ruled that the Easter festival should be celebrated throughout the Christian world on the first Sunday after the full moon following the vernal equinox; and that if the full moon should occur on a Sunday and thereby coincide with the Jewish Passover festival, Easter should be commemorated on the Sunday following. Coincidence of the feasts of Easter and Passover was thus avoided.
The Council of Nicaea also decided that the calendar date of Easter was to be calculated at Alexandria, the then principal astronomical center of the world. The accurate determination of the date, however, proved an impossible task in view of the limited knowledge of the 4th-century world. The principal astronomical problem involved was the discrepancy, called the epact, between the solar year and the lunar year. The chief calendric problem was a gradually increasing discrepancy between the true astronomical year and the Julian calendar then in use.
Later Dating Methods: Ways of fixing the date of the feast tried by the Catholic Church proved unsatisfactory, and Easter was celebrated on different dates in different parts of the world. In 387 A.D., for example, the dates of Easter in France and Egypt were 35 days apart. About 465 A.D., the Catholic Church adopted a system of calculation proposed by the astronomer Victorinus (fl. 5th cent.), who had been commissioned by Pope Hilarius (r. 461–68) to reform the calendar and fix the date of Easter. Elements of his method are still in use. Refusal of the British and Celtic churches to adopt the proposed changes led to a bitter dispute between them and Rome in the 7th century.
Reform of the Julian calendar occurred in 1582 A.D. by Pope Gregory XIII. Through adoption of the Gregorian calendar, it eliminated much of the difficulty in fixing the date of Easter and in arranging the ecclesiastical year; since 1752 A.D., when the Gregorian calendar was also adopted in Great Britain and Ireland, Easter has been celebrated on the same day in the Western part of the modern Christian world. The Eastern churches, however, which did not adopt the Gregorian calendar, commemorate Easter on a Sunday either preceding or following the date observed in the West. Occasionally the dates coincide; the most recent times were in 1865 and 1963.
Because the modern Christian Easter holiday affects a varied number of secular affairs in many countries, it has long been urged as a matter of convenience that the movable dates of the festival either be narrowed in range or replaced by a fixed date in the manner of Christmas. In 1923 the problem was referred to the Holy See of the Catholic Church, which has found no canonical objection to the proposed reform. In 1928 the British Parliament enacted a measure allowing the Church of England to commemorate Easter on the first Sunday after the second Saturday in April. Despite these steps toward reform, Easter continues to be a movable event for gentiles that claim to be Christians.
But according to Scripture, Easter has nothing to do with God, Jesus Christ, or the resurrection of Jesus Christ; it is simply the false teaching of the Catholic Church that incorporates the practices of the ancient religions that oppose God.
Colossians 2:16 Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: