FS-110 - What is Easter?

Easter is the most widely attended holiday on the Christian calendar, yet few believers know where its name, its symbols, or even its date actually come from. This course traces Easter’s full history in two parts. It first examines the holiday from the pagan side — the pre-Christian spring festivals, the goddess Eostre, and the eggs, hares, and hot cross buns adapted from those traditions during the Middle Ages and after — and shows why the modern Christian celebration, properly observed, has nothing to do with paganism despite sharing some of its symbols. The course then turns to Easter’s much older and far more significant root: the Jewish Passover. It walks through the Exodus account in detail — the plagues, the blood on the doorposts, the instructions for the Passover lamb — and draws out the striking typology connecting the Passover lamb to Christ Himself, from His unbroken bones to His role as “our Passover” in the words of Paul. From there the course traces how the early Church, largely Jewish at first, observed Passover as a commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection, how the Quartodeciman controversy split East and West over when to celebrate it, and how the Council of Nicaea in AD 325 set the rule still followed today — Easter falls on the Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The course closes with a survey of how Easter is actually observed today across Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions, and with the ancient Resurrection greeting that still echoes through churches every Easter Sunday: “He is risen! He is risen indeed!”