Easter is my favorite Christian holiday, (though admittedly Christmas is 'bigger') because of all the feast days that were 'borrowed' by the Catholic Church, Easter is the one that is the most obvious about it. The word 'Easter' comes from the Anglo-Saxon/Germanic Indo-European celebration of the dawn goddess, who's name is the root of our word 'East'. The celebration of the spring festival of the dawn goddess Easter included hiding eggs for children to find and fertility symbols like the ever-prolific bunny rabbit.
But the most obvious artifact of this religious borrowing isn't the Easter bunny or the name of the holiday, but its timing. It is otherwise entirely outside the Catholic faith to date things in such a fashion, but of course that is exactly how the Germanic tribes of 'Pagans' scheduled things, and to this day, in contrast to the day that Jesus supposedly was born, the day he died, backdated from the day he resurrected, is still not a fixed spot on our calender, but is instead the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. All due respect to the Christians, because I don't mind them using it, but Easter isn't really their holiday, and even less so than Christmas, (which is what they called Saturnalia when they borrowed that, which also loosely corresponds to the pagan celebration of Yule and the winter solstice.)
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