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Easter
Easter, Pascha, or Resurrection Day, is an important religious feast in the Christian year. It celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, which Christians believe occurred on the third day after his crucifixion some time in the period AD 27 to 33. Easter also refers to the season of the church year called Eastertide or the Easter Season. Traditionally the Easter Season lasted for the forty days from Easter Day until Ascension Day but now officially lasts for the fifty days until Pentecost. The first week of the Easter Season is known as Easter Week or the Octave of Easter.
The English name, "Easter", and the German, "Ostern", derive from the name of a putative Anglo-Saxon Goddess of the Dawn (thus, of spring, as the dawn of the year) — called Ēaster, Ēastre, and Ēostre in various dialects of Old English and Ostara in German.
In England, the annual festive time in her honour was in the "Month of Easter" or Ēostur-monath, equivalent to April/Aprilis.
Easter and the holidays related to it are not fixed dates on the calendar and falls at some point between late March and late April each year as it follows the cycle of the moon. You will see many families celebrating it as a non-religious holiday today. According to a popular piece of folklore, the Easter Bunny and the easter eggs came about because Eostre once saved a bird whose whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs. More recent additions to the celebration include easter baskets, chocolate, etc.
Compiled from info taken from
Wikipedia, Dictionary.com and Reference.com
