[photios]

> I find it odd how Easter, a pre-Christian Pagan festival (worshipping goddess of fertility: Eostre) has become seemingly-arbitrarily connected to the purported events at the end of Jesus' life..

The Eostre connection is unconvincing. Eostre is a Saxon goddess with earliest sources about her cult from 8th century and:

- Easter has been celebrated before 8th century.

- And it has been celebrated by people that have never heard of Saxons or their gods.

[tptacek]

The whole thing is super weird, because "Easter" isn't the canonical term for the day to begin with.

[teunispeters]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%92ostre covers a lot of ground and has references (thankfully)

[pkphilip]

The connection goes further back to Asheroth - the Cannanite goddess of fertility.

[rolandog]

The world was not ready for such religions then [0]:

> There are several reasons why the worship of Baal and Asherah was such a problem for Israel. First, the worship of Baal and Asherah held the allure of illicit sex, since the religion involved ritual prostitution. [...]

The Asherahs/Ashtoreths probably needed better branding.

[0]: https://www.gotquestions.org/Baal-and-Asherah.html

[krapp]

"the world?"

Ritual prostitution was common in many ancient religions, and Baal and Asherah were commonly worshipped at the time. It only seems aberrant in hindsight because we live in a world formed from the strict patriarchy and sexual taboos of one specific Semitic religion, and a narrative of history written by its adherents.

That said as far as I know the whole Easter/Eostre connection has been discredited by the actual evidence. Which is unfortunate because it would be such an enjoyable thing to annoy Christians with if it were true.

[anon291]

No it does not. Asheroth is a Canaanite language term. Easter comes from the Proto-Indo-European for dawn of east, the direction of the sunrise. A very fitting name for the rising of the Son of Man. The direct cognates to Easter are Usas (Indic languages), East, or Aurora.

[eitland]

Remember, Easter is only called Easter (or something similar) in a few languages, I'm only aware of English and German (Oster).