Easter

Easter is a Christian holiday that celebrates the day Christians believe Jesus rose from the dead. It is the most important holiday in the Christian religion. For many people, it is also a spring celebration with painted eggs, chocolate bunnies, and family meals. Easter is celebrated by about 2 billion Christians around the world.

Christians believe that Jesus was killed on a Friday, called Good Friday, and that he came back to life three days later. Coming back to life is called resurrection. The Sunday of the resurrection is Easter. The week leading up to Easter is called Holy Week. It includes Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and Good Friday. Many Christians go to church on Easter morning, sometimes very early, to celebrate.

Easter does not fall on the same date every year. It moves around because it is tied to the moon. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon that comes on or after March 21. That means it can land anywhere from March 22 to April 25. Christmas, by comparison, is always on December 25.

The word "Easter" has a strange history. In most languages, the holiday is named after the Hebrew word for Passover, the Jewish holiday Jesus was celebrating before he died. But in English and German, the name may come from an old spring goddess named Eostre. Some scholars think this story is true. Others think it is a guess made up much later. Historians still debate where the English name really came from.

Many Easter traditions go back hundreds or even thousands of years. Eggs are an old symbol of new life, and people in many cultures painted eggs in spring long before Christianity began. Christians later used eggs as a symbol of the resurrection. The Easter Bunny started in Germany in the 1600s. Children there were told that a magical hare laid colored eggs in the gardens of kids who had been good. German immigrants brought the idea to America in the 1700s.

Today, Easter looks different in different countries. In Greece, families crack red eggs together at the Easter table. In Poland, children splash each other with water on the Monday after Easter. In the United States, the White House has hosted an Easter Egg Roll on its front lawn almost every year since 1878. Kids push hard-boiled eggs across the grass with long wooden spoons. Whether it is a religious service or a hunt for hidden eggs, Easter is a holiday about new beginnings.