Should Christians Celebrate Easter or Not?

Yes, Christians may celebrate Easter, and nearly all of them do. Catholic, Orthodox and nearly all Protestant churches keep it as the day of the resurrection. The New Testament commands no yearly feast and forbids none, and a few groups, among them Jehovah’s Witnesses and some Churches of God, keep none.

What does the Bible say about celebrating Easter?

All four Gospels date the resurrection to the first day of the week. “Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark” (John 20:1); Matthew, Mark and Luke say the same. Paul makes the event the test of the faith: “if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:14).

The first Christians gathered on that day. “On the first day of the week, when we were gathered together to break bread” (Acts 20:7); Paul asks for a collection “on the first day of every week” (1 Corinthians 16:2); and John writes that he was “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (Revelation 1:10). No passage commands an annual celebration of the resurrection, and none forbids one.

Both sides in the argument use Paul. Those who keep Easter point to 1 Corinthians 5:7–8, where he writes that “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed,” and adds, “Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven … but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” Those who reject it point to his warnings against calendars: “You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain” (Galatians 4:10–11), and “let no one pass judgment on you … with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath” (Colossians 2:16).

How did the early church keep Easter?

It kept the feast and argued about the date. Eusebius reports that the churches of Asia observed the fourteenth day of the lunar month, the day the Passover lamb was killed, while the rest kept the resurrection only on a Sunday. Polycrates of Ephesus defended the older Asian practice: “We observe the exact day; neither adding, nor taking away.” Around 190 Victor of Rome tried to cut the Asian churches off, and Irenaeus of Lyons rebuked him for it, recalling that Polycarp and Bishop Anicetus had disagreed about the date in Rome and “parted from each other in peace.”

The Council of Nicaea settled the question in 325. Its letter to the churches states that “all our brethren in the East who formerly followed the custom of the Jews are henceforth to celebrate the said most sacred feast of Easter at the same time with the Romans.” The surviving letter gives no rule for calculating the date; the tables that fixed it came later.

Easter was also the season for baptisms. Tertullian, writing about 200, called the Passover “a more than usually solemn day for baptism; when, withal, the Lord’s passion, in which we are baptized, was completed.”

Which Christians do not celebrate Easter?

Jehovah’s Witnesses do not. Their website says, “The Easter holiday celebration is not based on the Bible. Jesus commanded that we commemorate his death, not his resurrection,” and they keep that Memorial once a year on the date of his death by the lunar calendar. They add that the origins of Easter customs “come from ancient fertility rites,” while stating that they believe in the resurrection and respect each person’s right to decide. The same reasoning keeps them from Good Friday.

The United Church of God, one of the Churches of God, states plainly: “We do not celebrate Easter.” Its members keep the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread instead, and the church holds that “Easter not only lacks biblical authority, but it was brought into ‘Christianity’ to replace God’s commanded festival.”

A few Reformed churches take the same line from the regulative principle of worship. The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland has called Easter “of both pagan and Papal origin,” adding that Christ’s “death is commemorated by the Lord’s Supper; His resurrection by the weekly Christian Sabbath.” According to the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Puritan reformers abolished Easter and Christmas, and Presbyterians in North America avoided both feasts for two centuries.

Is the name Easter pagan?

The name is English, and its origin is uncertain. Bede, writing in the eighth century, said that the month Eosturmonath “was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honour feasts were celebrated in that month,” and that the English kept her name for the Paschal season. Bede is the only source for Eostre, and some scholars have judged her his invention, though the discovery in 1958 of more than 150 inscriptions to matron goddesses called the Austriahenae, near Morken-Harff in Germany, moved most modern scholars to accept that such a goddess was worshiped.

Most languages never used the word at all. They call the feast some form of the Hebrew and Greek pascha, the word behind “paschal,” which the King James Version renders “Easter” at Acts 12:4. The popular claim that “Easter” comes from the Babylonian goddess Ishtar has no basis in the languages.

The customs are younger than the feast. Decorated eggs are usually traced to the medieval rule against eating eggs in Lent, which made them a food to bless and eat at Easter, and the earliest description of a hare that lays Easter eggs is a 1682 treatise by the physician Georg Franck von Franckenau, De ovis paschalibus.

Related reading

• Is Easter a Christian holiday?
• Easter or Resurrection Sunday?
• How Catholics celebrate Easter
• What Easter eggs mean for Christians