Okay so, here's the thing....<br/><br/>I once asked a preacher where the name Easter came from. He looked embarrassed and said he wasn't sure but he thought it was some pagan feast.<br/><br/>In fact, Ēostre is the Saxon goddess of spring, rebirth and fertility.<br/><br/>Hence the giving of fertility symbols like eggs, rabbits, lambs, and flowers.<br/><br/>The feast of Ēostre was supposed to mark the beginning of the new year... Oh, Happy Saxon New Year, everyone.  It was originally on the Spring equinox but with the imposition of the Julian Calender onto the Germanic tribes it was put on April 1st.<br/><br/>When the Anglo-Saxons were Christianised, in order to prevent them from worshipping the old gods, as we all know, the Christians imposed a new set of feasts over all the pagan ones. Hence Christmas replaces Yule, and the "paschal" feast replaced Ēostre. But Pesach was a Jewish feast that the Gentile Christians wanted to get away from, and for some reason the name Easter stayed, along with the fertility symbolism. Of course the Christians took the sexuality out of it with the myth about an empty tomb (for tomb read womb, lol).<br/><br/>The moving of new Year to the 1st of January was where April Fools Day came from. The pagans were still celebrating the new year on 1st April, and the Christians were making fun of them, saying that the new year started four months ago....<br/><br/>So, Happy Ēostre, everyone.