The one place in the bible that mentions the word Easter is in Acts 12:4:
And when he (King Herod) had apprehended him (Peter), he put him in prison, and delivered him to four quaternions of soldiers to keep him; intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people.
So what is Easter? Why is it such an important holiday in the Christian religion now? Let’s find out what Herod meant by the word Easter, who was celebrating it, and why.
The word Easter is derived from a Germainic goddess called Eostre, the goddess of spring. So Eostre was celebrated each spring in Paganism. (Wikepedia) Most Christian religions of today hold that Jesus the Messiah arose from the dead on Easter. But Eostre or Easter is another god. Why would Jesus give credence to what the bible defines as a false god? The bible holds that Jesus arose three days after his crucifixion. The crucifixion was on Passover in the Jewish calendar Nissan 14. Nissan 14 doesn’t occur on the same day number or day of the week on our Gregorian calendar. Nissan begins in the evening as the first sliver of the new moon is observed in the spring season, our March-April area.
In 325AD, the Roman Emperor Constantine sanctioned the Catholic Church, I believe as an attempt to gain more control over the peasant population. In an effort to win over the pagan populations, the Catholic Church in turn imported many of the pagan holiday festivals, like Halloween, Christmas, and Easter.
This leads us to the fact that Christian denominations today are celebrating Easter because they were brought out of the Catholic Church during the protestant split. Therefore these churches are defined by their actions, as being offspring or daughters of the Catholic Church.
These daughters of the Great Harlot are mentioned in the book of Revelation 17:5. Revelation 17:9 tells us who the harlot is.
If you are a member of one of these churches and are offended, you don’t have to be. In Revelation 18:4 God warns his people to come out of Babylon. I believe you don’t have to quit the church you are attending if the church would revise it’s teaching. Many churches today are hung up trying to DO the will of the Lord, but under their own power. Citing the verse “Faith without works is dead”, they do their best to perform works to prove they are children of God. This is backwards thinking. If one has faith first, then the works of the spirit will naturally follow. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”. That means that once you love Jesus, keeping his commandments come more naturally, and easily. If the church is so bent on doing the will of the Lord, and keeping his commandments, why are pagan holidays celebrated? The bible doesn’t tell us to keep any of these holidays of western civilization. God has his own feasts, or festivals, and he instructs us to keep them forever Ex 12:14,17,24. Largely today only the Jews are keeping them, and so they are called Jewish feasts, but they were not called Jewish feasts in the bible. They are God’s feasts and those who are God’s people will hold on to his teachings, and let go of man’s ways.