Where did the name of “Easter” come from?
Short answer: it probably comes from the old Germanic word for the month of April: Estor-monath, which means “the month of opening(s)” Long answer: First, we need to make it clear that “Easter” is only it’s name in English (and “Osterfest” in German). But most of the Christian world calls it by some adaptation of its Greek name, “PASCHA,” which actually means “Passover”. I hope I don’t need to explain why that is or what that means. Pascha was celebrated by Christians of the Roman and Parthian Empires, as well as Armenia and Ethiopia, under this name hundreds of years before the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes became Christians. The second question is whether the English name of the holiday “Easter” comes from the blurring of the Christian celebration of Pascha with the worship of a purported Germanic pagan fertility goddess named “Eostre”. The SOLE source for this belief is a single comment by the Venerable Bede in his history of the kings of England. There are several problems with this pa
