The celebration of Easter is rich with symbols and traditions and can vary from family to family. A typical Easter Sunday may include bunnies, decorated eggs, egg hunts, lilies, new clothes and sunrise services at church. While it may never cross the mind of some, many Christian families question the appropriate way to celebrate Easter. Has Easter become too commercialized? Or, aren’t some of these celebrations pagan at their root?

Crosswalk.com interviewed two authors to learn more about Easter and its history. After working in Christian retail for 13 years, Susan Richardson wrote “Holidays and Holy Days” to help answer similar questions posed by her customers. Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute International and host of the Bible Answer Man radio program, also speaks to the issue.

The resurrection of our Lord and Savior has been celebrated since the discovery of the empty tomb. However, the “official” holiday was declared in 325 A.D. when Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicaea. At that time it was determined that the church would celebrate Easter on the first Sunday that occurs after the first full moon on or after the vernal equinox. This is why the actual date of Easter varies from late March to early April every year due to the variances in the timing of the full moon.

Richardson explains that dating based on the moon was a nod toward the Jewish celebration of Passover, which was also determined by the moon. Many secularists today argue that Christians were attempting to circumvent the pagan celebrations of the day. However, Hanegraaff explains that instead, “Christians were saying ‘this is the real celebration.’ ”

From the timing, vernal (meaning spring) equinox (relative to the sun), to the name Easter, taken from the pre-Germanic word eostre (the direction from which the sun rises), both Hanegraaff and Richardson see early Christians as redeeming early pagan symbolism.

As Richardson says, “the new Christian might look at a familiar symbol and see it with new meaning.” For example, the hare, which has evolved into the modern day bunny, was seen as a symbol of fertility and spring. A Christian could view the hare’s coming out of the burrow, as representative of the burial and resurrection and a completely different form of “new life.”