The Pagan Origin of Easter
The term “Easter” is used by many good Christians without a thought of its origin. They do not know that it is purely pagan, the name of the Saxon goddess Eostre. This was only another name for the goddess of sensual love, worshiped by the Egyptians under the name of “Isis;” by Babylonians and Phœnicians called “Astarte;” by the Greeks, “Aphrodite;” by the Romans, “Venus, Flora, Ceres;” by the Ephesians, “Diana;” and by the Zidonians, in our common version, “Ashtoreth,” and by our pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors, “Easter,” or “Eostre.” Almost invariably connected with her worship was lewdness and licentiousness. Eostre was the goddess of spring. The pascha, an unauthorized feast, adopted by a rapidly apostatizing church to follow the passover and celebrate the resurrection of Christ, also came in the spring; and to mollify, placate, and more rapidly to convert the heathen, was brought in conjunction with the feast of Eostre, and the name of the Saxon goddess adopted. It was a wicked thing, because it placed on the same level the sacred and profane, and so blinded the minds of God’s people. There are those who think it a Christian term, because it occurs in our common version of the Bible (Acts 12:4); but there is absolutely no warrant for the use of the term. The word ought to be “passover,” as in the Revision. The word, the custom, the name, is in no sense Christian.