Is Easter a Pagan Holiday?

While rabbits and eggs have nothing to do with Jesus, the word Easter is actually based on the ancient German word for “rise” so it is synonymous with resurrections. This is the reason we call the direction the sun rises in the “east” in English. English is a Germanic language, not a Latin one so it uses a different word for Easter from the Latin languages like Spanish, French, etc. Latin languages use a variation of Pascha which is the Latin/Greek translation of Pesach. Pesach is the Hebrew word for Passover a.k.a “The Festival of Unleavened Bread”. Some say Easter is a pagan holiday because it is related to the Babylonian fertility goddess Ishtar. The Ishtar connection with Easter is a false cognate. Those language groups aren’t even in the same family, and Easter is only used in English and German.

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