The Rest of the Story: Easter came from Eostre

In my early years living in North East Louisiana I would often listen to the radio commentary of Paul Harvey.

Every afternoon around 2 p.m. Paul Harvey would have a show on the local radio station called “The rest of the story.”

In that 10-minute radio story, he would give the details of some not very known fact about a person or a place.

Like most, I found the program and insights very informative.

He would then end the program by saying “now you know the rest of the story.”

Often over the years of ministry I have been asked a questions, “Where does the name Easter come from?”

The second most asked question is, “How do they determine the date for Easter each year?”

Easter, is an interesting name for a holiday celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.

Some claim it is really a pagan holiday.

Is that true?

No, but the name could certainly make it easy to believe that. Easter draws its name from the Old Anglo-Saxon goddess Eostre, a goddess of fertility and springtime.

But that is easily laid to rest by looking outside of English speaking countries, as well as looking at history.

Most non-English countries refer to Easter as Paschal, Pascha or Pesach, drawing on words related to the Jewish Passover to name Easter. And we have records of Christians celebrating Christ’s resurrection as early as the second century A.D.

So why did Christians in England decide to call this day Easter?

Because Easter wasn’t just the name of a goddess. Eostre was the Old English word for the month of April. They loved to name times and seasons after their gods and goddesses. They did this with days of the week too, by the way.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are all named after Old English pagan gods. Tiw’s Day, Woden’s Day, Thor’s Day and Freya’s Day.

Because Resurrection Sunday fell in the month of Eostre, Christians started to call it Eostre, and it eventually became Easter in modern English.

The second most asked question is, “How do they determine Easter dates?”

For me that is the hardest question to answer.

So here goes.

This is always most confusing.

The date for Easter is determined by the following criteria.

Easter celebrates the day of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Easter is called a movable feast, which means that it does not occur on the same date every year.

Easter is calculated based on the phases of the moon and the coming of spring.

In 325 A.D., the Council of Nicaea, which agreed upon the basic principles of Christianity, established a formula for the date of Easter. They said it as the Sunday following the paschal full moon, which is the full moon that falls on or after the spring equinox. In practice, that means that Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon that falls on or after March 21.

Easter can occur as early as March 22 and as late as April 25, depending on when the paschal full moon occurs.

Easter is not always celebrated universally by all Christians on the same date.

Western Christians, including the Roman Catholic Church and Protestant denominations, calculate the date of Easter by using the Gregorian calendar, which is a more astronomically precise calendar that’s used throughout the West today in both the secular and religious worlds.

Eastern Orthodox Christians, such as the Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians, continue to use the older Julian calendar to calculate the date of Easter.

The Orthodox Church uses the exact same formula established by the Council of Nicaea for determining the date of Easter only with a different calendar.

Because of the date differences on the Julian calendar, the Eastern Orthodox celebration of Easter always occurs after the Jewish celebration of Passover.

So, now you know why it is called Easter and how the date is chosen.

Now you know the rest of the story.

Rev. Frank Chlastak began work as senior minister of First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Poplar Bluff in 2015. He is a graduate of Northeast Louisiana University and New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and has served congregations of the Christian Church in Louisiana, Arkansas, Virginia, Oklahoma and Missouri.