Easter Bunny? Eggs?! WtHeck?!

Okay, so we know that when most peeps (pun totally intended) think of Easter they think of The Easter Bunny, colorful eggs, Easter Egg hunts, and those super cute colorful baskets filled with goodies that you can find at like Wal-Mart, Walgreens, etc (Fact: once when I was little, like 7, my grandma bought me a 5 foot tall Easter Basket! Whoa! So many goodies were in there lol. I will always remember that. :) )

Anyways, many people don't know much about the holiday apart from what commercialization has done to it. In the Christian world, Easter is celebrated as the day in which Jesus Christ rose from the dead to defeat death and pay for human sins so we may be forgiven and have a chance at everlasting life with God. Easter is Jesus Christ's victory over death. His resurrection symbolizes the eternal life that is granted to all who believe in Him. The meaning of Easter also symbolizes the complete verification of all that Jesus preached and taught during His three-year ministry. If He had not risen from the dead, if He had merely died and not been resurrected, He would have been considered just another teacher or Rabbi. However, His resurrection changed all that and gave final and irrefutable proof that He was really the Son of God and that He had conquered death once and for

However, Easter didn't always start out as a Christian holiday. It used to be a pagan holiday and festival. The name "Easter" originated with the names of an ancient Goddess. She was known by Oestre or Eastre, and in Germany by the name of Ostara. Supposedly she was a goddess of the dawn and the spring, and her name derives from words for dawn, the shining light arising from the east ( Fact: Our words for the "female hormone" estrogen derives from her name). She was a fertility goddess.

The Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny were both born from Ostara. The eggs obviously represent fertility and the chicks represent new life and growth. Bunnies, brightly colored eggs, and chicks were all used in the festivities to celebrate Ostara's gifts of fertility.

Although, I'm Christian and I celebrate Easter for the first reason, I still enjoy coloring eggs and such. Most Christians do. It's just another example of how religion and secular traditions can intertwine sometimes.