EASTER BUNNY

The English term, according to the Ven. Bede (De temporum ratione, I, v), relates to Estre, a Teutonic goddess of the rising light of day and spring, which deity , however, isotherwise unknown, even in the Edda (Simrock, Mythol., 362); Anglo-Saxon , eâster, eâstron ; Old High German , ôstra, ôstrara, ôstrarûn ; German , Ostern . April was called easter-monadh . The plural eâstron is used, because the feast lasts seven days. Like the French plural Pâques , it is a translation from the Latin Festa Paschalia , the entire octave of Easter. The Greek term for Easter, pascha , has nothing in common with the verb paschein , "to suffer,"although by the later symbolic writers it was connected with it; it is the Aramaic form of the Hebrew pesach ( transitus , passover ). The Greeks called Easter the pascha anastasimon ; Good Friday the pascha staurosimon. The respective terms used by the Latins are Pascharesurrectionis and Pascha crucifixionis. In the Roman and Monastic Breviaries the feast bears the title Dominica Resurrectionis ; inthe Mozarabic Breviary , In Lætatione Diei Pasch Resurrectionis ; in the Ambrosian Breviary , In Die Sancto Paschæ . The Romance languages have adopted the Hebrew-Greek term: Latin , Pascha ; Italian , Pasqua ; Spanish , Pascua ; French , Pâques. Also some Celtic and Teutonic nations use it: Scottish , Pask ; Dutch , Paschen ; The correct word in Dutch is actually Pasen Danish , Paaske ; Swedish , Pask ; even in the German provinces of the Lower Rhine the people call the feast Paisken not Ostern. The word is, principally in Spain and Italy , identified with the word "solemnity" and extended to other feasts , e.g. Sp. , Pascua florida , Palm Sunday ; Pascua de Pentecostes , Pentecost ; Pascua dela Natividad , Christmas ; Pascua de Epifania , Epiphany . In some parts of France also First Communion is called Pâques , whatever time of theyear administered. The feast Easter is the principal feast of the ecclesiastical year. Leo I (Sermo xlvii in Exodum ) calls it the greatest feast ( festum festorum ), and says that Christmas is celebrated only in preparation for Easter. It is the centre of the greater part of the ecclesiastical year. The order of Sundays from Septuagesima to the last Sunday after Pentecost , the feast of the Ascension , Pentecost , Corpus Christi , and all other movable feasts , from that of the Prayer of Jesus in the Garden (Tuesday after Septuagesima ) to the feast of the Sacred Heart (Friday after the octave of Corpus Christi ), depend upon the Easter date . Commemorating the slaying of the true Lamb of God and the Resurrection of Christ , the corner-stone upon which faith is built, it is also the oldest feast of the Christian Church , as old as Christianity , the connecting link between the Old and New Testaments . That the Apostolic Fathers do not mention it and that we first hear of it principally through the controversy of the Quartodecimans are purely accidental . The connection betweenthe Jewish Passover and the Christian feast of Easter is real andideal. Real , since Christ died on the first Jewish Easter Day; ideal, like the relation between type and reality, because Christ's death and Resurrection had its figures and types in the Old Law , particularly in the paschal lamb , which was eaten towards evening of the 14th of Nisan. In fact, the Jewish feast wastaken over into the Christian Eastercelebration; the liturgy ( Exsultet ) sings of the passing of Israel through the Red Sea , the paschal lamb , the column of fire, etc. Apart, however, from the Jewish feast , the Christians would have celebrated the anniversary of the death and the Resurrection of Christ . But for such a feast it was necessary to know the exact calendar date of Christ's death . To know this day was very simple for the Jews ; it was the day after the 14th of the first month, the 15th of Nisan of their calendar . But in other countries of the vast Roman Empire there were other systems of chronology . The Romans from 45 B.C. had used the reformed Julian calendar ; there were also the Egyptian and the Syro-Macedonian calendar . The foundation of the Jewish calendar was the lunar year of 354 days, whilst the other systems depended on the solar year. In consequence the first days of the Jewish months and years did not coincide with any fixed days of the Roman solar year. Every fourth year of the Jewish system had an intercalary month. Since this month was inserted, not according to some scientific method or some definite rule, but arbitrarily, by command of the Sanhedrin , a distant Jewish date can never with certainty be transposed into the corresponding Julian or Gregorian date (Ideler, Chronologie, I, 570 sq.). The connection between the Jewish and the Christian Pasch explains the movable character of this feast . Easter has no fixed date , like Christmas , because the 15th of Nisan of the Semitic calendar wasshifting from date to date on the Julian calendar . Since Christ , the true Paschal Lamb