Easter or Passover: What Does the Bible Teach?

Maybe it's time to take a closer look at Easter—and instead learn about the biblical Passover, with its wonderful meaning. It can easily be found in the pages of your Bible.

It's that time of the year again, the time people refer to as the "Paschal season." For many in the Christian world that means eggs, rabbits and Sunday sunrise services. But how many stop to think where all these customs originated? Or even whether they may be found in the Bible? Surprising as it might sound, none of these customs is commanded or sanctioned anywhere in the pages of Holy Scripture.

In fact the name "Easter" is conspicuous only by its absence. It doesn't appear in modern translations, and occurs only once in the 1611 King James Version of Acts 12:4. The error was corrected in the New King James Version, where the word is translated "Passover."

"Passover": it's a term less familiar than "Easter," but it occurs some 28 times in the New Testament! Jesus Christ Himself declared "with fervent desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer" (Luke 22:15). And the Apostle Paul, writing to the Church of God in Corinth, instructed the Christians to follow the example of Jesus Christ, and partake of the Passover ceremony of bread and wine on the same night the Lord did.

So where did all the Easter customs, like bunny rabbits, eggs and Sunday sunrise services originate? Listen to the words of the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

"The name Easter…, is a survival from the old Teutonic mythology. According to Bede… it is derived from Eostre or Ostara, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, to whom the month… April, and called Eoster-monath, was dedicated. This month, Bede says, was the same as the mensis paschalis, 'when the old festival was observed with the gladness of a new solemnity'" (11th edition, page 828).

In other words, the Christians took pre-Christian or pagan customs and baptized them, something expressly forbidden in the Word of God. This caused a great controversy among Christians in the second century, referred to as the "Quartodeciman Controversy"; some then contended for the Passover, on the 14th of Nisan, while others favored the syncretized pagan-Christian practice of Easter. Little wonder many Bible-believing Christians to this day reject the taint of paganism, and cling tenaciously to the biblical festival of Passover.

So what are your plans for your spring religious calendar? Maybe it's time to take a closer look at Easter—and instead learn about the biblical Passover, with its wonderful meaning. It can easily be found in the pages of your Bible.