Daily Devotional For Tuesday Pt. 1, April 22, 2025

Traditions. We all have them and typically most of us enjoy celebrating them. When it comes to holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, and, etc., these traditions can become “hard-wired” into our system. We can do them without ever wondering why or wondering why we do our traditions. Over time, some individuals and families may modify their traditions because reality requires it. Maybe a loved one died or there was a move to another state or a lingering illness, but even if the tradition is modified, the “meat” of it mostly stays.

So, I have a question for you. How do you and your family celebrate Easter? Easter has become an international event and holiday. And all around the world, different nationalities and ethnic groups have their own generation traditions on how they celebrate it. Countries all around the world celebrate Easter differently based on their own folk-lore, paganism, culturalism and Christianity. Let me give you some of these:

1. In San Diego, CA, on Easter morning, descendants of the Aztec Indians on horseback greeted the dawn with a special Indian song. 
2. In Belgium, people will be busily hiding their loved ones’ shoes and then demanding witty forfeits for their return. The Bavarians will be chasing each other around a pole. 
3. In Poland and Hungary and Czechoslovakia, young people will slosh water on village girls. 
4. In Austria, people will cut brushwood and encourage the revelers to whack each other on the shoulders to wish them good luck.
5. In Ireland, it’ll be the day of the biggest horse race of the year with the most money bet. 
6. Outside the cathedral in Florence, Italy, the people will set ablaze an oxcart full of fireworks. 
7. The Scandinavians will bring out their special seasonal Easter beer. 
8. In Rio, the hangovers from Carnival are beginning at last to clear the heads. 
9. Even in Scotland, where they make hot-crossed buns for Easter, they do not originate with Easter nor with Christianity. Originally, they were used in the celebrations of Astarte, the Phoenician goddess of fertility.
10. And in America, people will eat rabbits, candy, and eggs, and wear their spring clothes and play with their kids, and some may go to Church. When it comes to Easter, it seems the Easter bunny is slowly replacing Jesus’ Resurrection as the basis of why we celebrate this holiday culturally.

While some of these traditions may seem insensitive and appalling to some Christians, these are now considered “Easter” traditions around the world. In fact, the term Easter is not a Christian term at all; it is the name of the ancient Anglo-Saxon goddess of light, Eostre. And you might be interested to know that Easter celebrations predate Christianity, so that the resurrection of Christ has come lately to be one of the themes of Easter. In some parts of Europe, Eostre over time came to be associated with spring, renewal and fertility. 

My concern is this: Christianity has two holidays: Christmas and Easter. And the devil has almost hijacked both by replacing the Christian reason we celebrate them with paganistic, cultural and personal subjective opinions as to how and why we celebrate these holidays. The word “holiday” is the combination of two English words: “holy” and “day.” Centuries ago people used to say happy holy days. Over time, as people say these quickly, the two words merged into one. 

So, why in America do we now have bunnies and colored eggs associated with Easter? The practice goes way back in history. In ancient Egypt, the Egyptians used the rabbit as a symbol of fertility, birth, spring and new life. When this ideology made its way to Europe by Egyptian immigrants and travelers, Germany took it to a whole new level. When German immigrants came to America in the 1700s, they brought with them some of their pagan traditions. One is called “Osterhase” or “Oscheter Haws,” based on the Egyptian tradition of fertility. 

This was a German pagan holiday associated with fertility and newlife, where rabbits became the animal symbol for this. Children would create nests for the hare to lay its eggs, and the tradition gradually evolved into the Easter Bunny we know today because Easter and spring occur around the same time seasonally. 

One more piece of trivia for you. We can date the birth of the “Easter Bunny” in Europe to 1682, when a German Lutheran named Georg Franck von Franckenau, a German physician and botanist, wrote a story about an Easter hare bringing eggs to children titled “De Ovis Paschalibus.” His work was to mock ancient pagan symbols of life and fertility and how they were connected to religious customs. So, he connected his “story” to the Christian holiday of Easter to show how gullible people are to attach an egg-laying or an egg-laying hare to it. 

Kind of strange since rabbits and hares do not lay eggs, but have live births for their young. His intent was to mock the practice, but unfortunately it had the opposite effect. What I am advocating is a return in our churches and families to a biblical understanding of Easter and Christmas. To me, Christmas is solely about the birth of Jesus. To me, Easter is solely about the Resurrection of Jesus. Even the modern day Christmas tree dates back to the Roman Empire when Roman citizens would decorate their evergreens in their homes as a symbol of fertility, new life and renewal. When Rome became Christianized, the “tree” was “Christianized” as well to represent the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. That is why we have Christmas trees.

Assignment: Take some time in your quiet time as either an individual or a family to discuss how you can make the two holidays of Christmas and Easter align them more with our Christian values. I am not suggesting you to not decorate, but what I am suggesting is how can you make these two holidays more visual, more alive, and more real from a biblical basis.

Scripture To Meditate On: Luke 24:5b-6a, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? (6) He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead!” (NLT).

Prayer To Pray: “Dear Lord it is so easy to get caught up in cultural traditions without realizing why we celebrate them this way. I do not want to be so gullible and mock Your birth and Your Resurrection by using ancient pagan fertility traditions. Thank You for Your birth and for Your Resurrection. Thank You for the new life I have because of both. I love You Lord. In Jesus’ name, Amen!”

I love you Southside! – Pastor Kelly