"A bright holiday" - this is how Christians call Easter. It is central to Christian holidays. But many of the customs associated with Easter make you think about the pagan past.
The name "Passover" comes from the Hebrew word "Pesach" - "passing by." This is connected with one of the episodes of the Old Testament book "Exodus": God promises to Moses "to go through the land of Egypt" and destroy all the firstborn. This terrible execution did not affect only Jewish houses, which were marked with the blood of lambs. After these events, the Pharaoh allows the Jews to leave Egypt - the long-term slavery, in which the chosen people lived, ends. In memory of this, the Jews celebrated the Passover holiday every year with the obligatory slaughter of a lamb (lamb).
Pesach was also celebrated at the time of the earthly life of Jesus Christ. The Last Supper - the last meal of the Savior with the apostles - was an Easter meal. The Last Supper was followed by a crucifixion, and on the third day, a resurrection. So the Old Testament holiday was filled with a new meaning: instead of the sacrificial lamb - the sacrifice of the Son of God on the cross, instead of the exodus from the Egyptian slavery - the exodus from the "bondage" of sin.
So, Easter is a holiday rooted in the Old Testament and dedicated to the central event of the New Testament, and it cannot be considered a pagan holiday.
But all the peoples who adopted Christianity were once pagan, and this did not pass without a trace. Many Christian holidays are "overgrown" with customs originating in the pagan past, and Easter was no exception.
It is noteworthy that the English and German names of the holiday are not associated with the Hebrew name. In English, Easter is called Easter, in German - Ostern. In both languages, this is associated with the word "east". This root goes back to the name of the goddess Ishtar, who was venerated in a number of states of Mesopotamia, her cult penetrated into Egypt. The cult of Ishtar and her son Tammuz was associated with fertility. The holiday dedicated to these deities marked the arrival of spring, the resurrection of nature, the sun after winter.
Boiled eggs were important attributes of this holiday - in memory of the egg on which the goddess descended from the moon. The rabbit, an animal especially beloved by Tammuz, played an important role in the rituals.
In Russia, of course, neither Ishtar nor Tammuz was revered, but there was a holiday dedicated to the onset of spring, and an egg also played a large role in its rituals - a symbol of the birth of a new life.
Chronologically, the festival coincided with the Jewish and then Christian Easter. Living among the pagans, the Jews could borrow some customs from them. Subsequently, representatives of pagan peoples, having become Christians, could preserve pagan customs, giving them a new meaning. This was the case wherever new faith came.
The Church did not object to old customs if they were reinterpreted in a Christian spirit. In particular, the custom of painting eggs for Christians is no longer associated with the symbolism of fertility, but with the famous story of the meeting of Mary Magdalene with the Roman emperor. Objections were raised only by direct references to the past, to pagan ritual actions. For example, in Russia, the Orthodox Church had nothing against painted eggs - they are even consecrated in churches on the eve of Easter, but condemned the rolling of eggs - a pagan game associated with the cult of Yarila. Likewise, in the West it is no longer a "pagan" custom to cook a rabbit for Easter.
Thus, Easter cannot be considered a pagan holiday, and even pre-Christian customs, combined with Easter, ceased to be pagan in their semantic content.
