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Originally posted by paramiteabe
Al you are right that is the most important thing about Easter. The Crucifixtion and his riseing! If that never happen we would never have eternal life(1) or Easter.(2)
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1. As Tom said, I don't see many 2000-year-olds wandering about...
2. There now follows an explanation of the true origins of Easter.
The name "Easter" is the name of a pagan goddess variously called "Eostre", "Eastre", "Ishtar", "Ostarun" or "Ostera." Easter is the old Teutonic pagan Anglo-Saxon goddess of the spring. She is also referred to as "the goddess of fertility." Her name is the source from which the medical term "Estrous Cycle," which is associated with female biology, has been derived. This pagan goddess Easter then is associated with the giving of life, the regeneration of life in the spring, the giver of the fertile state to all creatures.
For all these gifts, a full month of feast and celebration was dedicated in the Spring of each year during the month of April (which was also called "Eostur-monath"). This feast and celebration was established and practiced long before the resurrection of Jesus Christ supposedly occurred in 33 C.E.
During the fourth century, after the Emperor Constantine came into power, he found himself at war with rival Roman candidates for the rank of Caesar. He thought it wise to incorporate into the Roman populous the support of the suppressed Christian church rather than to alienate it. So he had a plan. He claimed that while on a military campaign at Susa and Turin, he had seen in a vision: a cross in the sky surrounded by the words "in this sign shalt thou conquer." As a result Emperor Constantine declared both himself and all of his armies to be Christians. This was a "conversion by imperial decree." Another decree from Constantine was that nobody could hold a major position in the government who was not a Christian. When these jobs were threatened, suddenly many more people became "believers."
In order to aid this mass conversion, Constantine soon discovered that it was difficult to persuade ordinary people to stop celebrating their original festivals and begin celebrating Christian ones. He therefore changed tactics, and instead of trying to get people to change their festivals, he simply allowed them to carry on celebrating their own festivals, but
he declared those festivals to be Christian festivals.
The feast of "Easter" is one of these pagan practices. It had nothing to do with Messiah. In 325 C.E. the now infamous "Council of Nicea," also referred to as the "First Ecumenical Council," was called by Constantine. It was at this council over which Constantine himself presided, that it was established that the resurrection of Yahshua would be celebrated on the already established pagan feast called "Easter." Why? Two reasons. First, because the day on which the resurrection of Yahshua was being celebrated was a "Jewish" festival (Passover). It is actually a Biblical "festival of YHVH," but at that time anything considered Jewish was treated as poison. Although the early gentile believers (Christians) were happy to be associated with the religion of Yahshua and His disciples because Rome allowed the Jews relative independence, by this time the Jews were being heavily persecuted, and there was a desire among " Christian" leadership to distance themselves from the root of the faith.
The second reason was that among the pagans that Constantine needed to draw into his new "state religion," Easter was a very popular feast. Instead of trying to get an entire empire of "instant Christians" to forsake their wicked ways and repent --i.e., give up one of their favorite "holidays," the council simply substituted the pagan holiday of Easter for the correct celebration of the resurrection of Messiah. They substituted the pagan feast of Easter for the Biblical feast of Passover, while having the audacity to keep the same name of a pagan goddess! Under this convenient arrangement, no repentance was necessary, no one was unhappy, no waves were stirred, and YHVH was ignored.
Proof of this pagan link is that the determination of when "Easter" will occur has nothing to do with the resurrection of the Messiah! Easter is determined (per the Council of Nicea, 325 C.E.) to occur on the first Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox. This is because "Easter" was and is directly associated with the "birth of spring," not the resurrection of Yahshua. Further proof is the presence of the pagan rituals of "Easter eggs" and bunnies, which are both fertility symbols.
So you see, Easter is
not a festival celebrating the Resurrection of Christ, but a Pagan Festival celebrating Fertility and Life. It was associated with Christianity purely as a way to express the inherent Anti-Semitism within the Church, and as a way to forcibly convert that Pagan masses to Christianity.
That in mind, let us celebrate the True Meaning of Easter!
Happy Eostur-monath! 
Easter
<------- I forgot that!
