Why do we Celebrate easter and color eggs and hide them?

Question

really?

Answer 1

Easter is originated from the Druid rites of spring equinox. The festival of rebirth and new life was celebrated by planting and gathering new flowers coloring eggs in the hues of spring (and occasionally small animals) and of course much singing and merriment. During the "Christian era" when the religion of Christianity was proliferated globally the priests took local pagan practices and rebaptised them into the service of the Christian faith, turning the festival of Spring into a celebration of the resurrection of their lord Jesus.

Answer 2

The Easter Bunny is a rabbit-spirit. Long ago, he was called the "Easter Hare", hares and rabbits have frequent multiple births so they became a symbol of fertility. The custom of an Easter egg hunt began because children believed that hares laid eggs in the grass. The Romans believed that "All life comes from an egg." Christians consider eggs to be "the seed of life" and so they are symbolic of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Why we dye, or color, and decorate eggs is not certain. In ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and Persia eggs were dyed for spring festivals. In medieval Europe, beautifully decorated eggs were given as gifts.

Answer 3

Easter is a spring festival and thus represents new life, when all the little woodland creatures have had their babies and come out of hiding after winter.

Bunnies and eggs are just a way of symbolising that.

Answer 4

Rabbits and eggs are both symbols of the fertility goddess Eostre/Ishtar/Ostara. Her symbol is also the moon, in which some cultures see a rabbit instead of a face. Eggs also symbolize the moon and are the ultimate symbol of creation and new life. The basket is a symbol of the womb in which this new life is carried.

The feast day is pagan and was widely celebrated way before the time of Jesus. Like pretty much all holidays, it was adopted by Christians to help get more converts. However, since the point is to celebrate new life and the hope of continuance, Christian symbols of a Resurrection day and the old pagan symbols mean the same thing. Just like Christmas, we are all celebrating the same thing, just using different symbols.

Answer 5

There are various reasons for the holiday of Easter.  One is the Christian based reason that Christ died on the cross and then rose from the grave three days later (on a Sunday) which we now call Easter.  Catholics participate in Lent for 40 days before Easter Sunday.  As said before, it is a celebration of new life.  

Another reason is due to pagan and other monotheistic religions in celebration of the Goddess and God.  Named after Eastre or Eostre for the Saxon Pagan Goddess of fertility.  They would hold a celebration and rituals for her to honor her in hope that she would bless their crops and harvests for the following seasons as spring is when they would plant the land.  Easter occurs around the time of the spring equinox (when the day and night hours are equal) this celebration is also called Beltane and occurs around March 19-21st. This is to welcome the sun back as the days will begin to become longer and the nights shorter.

The reason for the Easter eggs is that the EGG symbolizes new life or rebirth.  Everything that is a carbon based organisam (breathes air) reproduces or is created from an egg.  So they are used in hunts to symbolize the finding of a new life or new life being brought back to nature. They are colored to make them easier to find, and because pastel colors have meaning for the holiday as well to bring about new things, happiness, growth, an joy.

Answer 6

Easter is the Christian celebration of Christ's resurrection. It is one of the most important festivals in the Christian calendar and has been so for nearly 2000 years.

Is is not based on any known pagan festival. Its date is derived from the Jewish Passover and so it, like the passover, is set by the moon as well as by the sun - it follows a lunar calendar hence its date in our solar calendar varies from year to year. For historical reasons it does not always coincide precisely with Passover.

Historically its name derives from Passover so it was known as "Pascha" in latin or by names coming from that word such a Paques in French. It is ONLY known as Easter in Anglo-Saxon countries, England in particualr, where, acccording to a medieval scholar called Bede, it became known by the name of the month - Eostremonath, April - in which it usually occurs. Bede further speculated that the month was named aftter a goddess Eostre - but absolutely nothing else is know nof this goddess from historical evidence - the many stories about her you will find on the web were made up in the 19th and 20th centuries. Many modern historians reckon Bede got it wrong in any case and that there was no such goddess as all the other Anglo-Saxon deities are well documented.

Interestingly the Gaelic words for Easter (Irish and Welsh) have nothing to do with any Goddess - they come from Pascha.

The precise reason for the eggs is uncertain. One likely reason is that historically Christians used to fast from meat, dairy products and eggs during the period before Easter called Lent (about 6 weeks). Hence eggs became symbolic of the ending of the fast and were decorated and given as presents. The egg hide and seek is a folk custom from Germany and is not universal - not a tradition in England.

Answer 7

it a hold over from a pagan spring festival http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu6dTp2Ob...