Is Easter a Christian Holiday? Yes, It Celebrates the Resurrection

Yes. Easter is the day Christians celebrate Jesus rising from the dead. It falls on a Sunday in spring, the churches rank it above every other day of the year, and Christians were already keeping it in the second century. In most languages its name comes from Pascha, the Greek and Latin form of the Hebrew Pesach, Passover.

Before it had a fixed date, Easter was news, passed from one disciple to another: “The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon” (Luke 24:34, KJV). Orthodox Christians still greet one another with it on the day. The eggs, the hare and the English name gathered round the feast later. The news came first, and it is still the heart of the day.

What does Easter mean for Christians?

Easter celebrates the central claim of Christian faith: that Jesus, crucified on a Friday at Passover, rose from the dead on the third day. The Gospels place the discovery of the empty tomb “very early on the first day of the week” (Mark 16:2). Paul told the church at Corinth that everything rests on it: “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14). He also tied the feast to Passover: “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Corinthians 5:7).

Because the resurrection happened on the first day of the week, Christians made Sunday “the Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10), and every Sunday is a small Easter. The Catholic Catechism calls Easter “not simply one feast among others, but the ‘Feast of feasts,’ the ‘Solemnity of solemnities’” (Catechism 1169). The celebration does not end on Easter Sunday. In the Catholic calendar, “the fifty days from the Sunday of the Resurrection to Pentecost Sunday are celebrated in joy and exultation as one feast day.”

When did Christians first celebrate Easter?

The New Testament does not command a yearly Easter, but by the second century the churches were keeping one and arguing over its date. The church historian Eusebius records that the churches of Asia Minor ended their fast on the fourteenth day of the Jewish month Nisan, the date of Passover, whatever day of the week it fell on, while the churches elsewhere celebrated the resurrection only on a Sunday. Polycarp of Smyrna and Anicetus, bishop of Rome, discussed the difference without settling it and remained in communion. Melito, bishop of Sardis (died c. 180), preached a homily titled On the Pascha, and Easter was already the great night for baptisms.

At the Council of Nicaea in 325 the bishops agreed, in the words of the emperor Constantine’s letter, “that this feast ought to be kept by all and in every place on one and the same day.” The Catechism summarizes the rule as “the Sunday following the first full moon (14 Nisan) after the vernal equinox” (Catechism 1170).

Where does the name Easter come from?

Most languages keep the Passover name: Pâques in French, Pascua in Spanish, Pasqua in Italian, Páscoa in Portuguese. English and German are the exceptions. The English monk Bede wrote in the eighth century that the month the English called Eosturmonath “was once called after a goddess of theirs named Ēostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month.” Scholars still debate Bede’s account. The claim that Easter is a pagan festival rests largely on this English name and on later customs such as eggs and the hare; the feast itself is older than the English church and was called Pascha from the start.

What are the religious symbols of Easter?

The oldest Easter symbols come from the liturgy. At the Easter Vigil on Saturday night, a new fire is lit and blessed, the Paschal candle is lit from it as a sign of the risen Christ, and the water for baptism is blessed. The lamb recalls Paul’s words about “Christ, our Passover lamb.”

Eggs became Easter food partly because they were forbidden during Lent in the Middle Ages and were blessed and eaten again at Easter. Christians have long read the egg as a sign of the sealed tomb from which Christ rose, and Orthodox Christians dye eggs red in memory of his blood. The Easter hare is later and comes from German folk custom: a German writer described in 1682 the belief that a hare laid eggs in gardens for children to find.

How do Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants celebrate Easter?

For Catholics, the Easter Vigil is “the ‘mother of all holy Vigils,’” celebrated after nightfall on Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday is a day of obligation, as every Sunday is. Catholics must also receive Communion at least once a year during the Easter season (canon 920). In the United States this “Easter duty,” known in French as faire ses Pâques, can be fulfilled from the First Sunday of Lent to Trinity Sunday.

Orthodox Christians call the feast Pascha and greet one another with “Christ is risen!” and the reply “Indeed he is risen!” They calculate its date from the older Julian calendar, so Orthodox Easter often falls later than Western Easter. In 2026 Western churches kept Easter on April 5 and the Orthodox on April 12; in 2027 the dates are March 28 and May 2. In 2028 both fall on April 16.

Protestant churches keep Easter on the same date as Catholics. The Episcopal Church lists Easter Day first among its principal feasts, and Lutheran, Anglican and Methodist churches that hold an Easter Vigil use a rite much like the Catholic one. The Reformed churches of England and Scotland set holy days aside in 1645, keeping only the Lord’s day. Jehovah’s Witnesses do not celebrate Easter; they hold that its customs are pagan and instead observe the Memorial of Christ’s death on the date of Nisan 14.

So the date moves from one calendar to another, and the customs change from country to country, but the morning is the same morning. The old Orthodox greeting fits every one of them: “Christ is risen!” “Indeed he is risen!”

Related reading

• The meaning of Easter in Christianity
• Easter eggs in Christian tradition
• Should Christians celebrate Easter?