Brother Bob Pellien: Thank you all very much! Welcome! Welcome! Welcome everyone to this program That’s in the Bible Live today. 

I’m Brother Bob Pellien and we thank you all for joining us today, being our studio audience. We are very thankful, as well, to all those who will be watching this recorded broadcast later on in various Church mediums like Direct TV, incmedia.org, INCTV America, and several others. 

Now those who have been tuning into our program on a regular basis, you know already that in this show, That’s in the Bible, we explore the Bible’s teaching on many topics. Topics relating to salvation and relating to proper service to God. 

Today’s topic:

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What Does Celebrating Easter Say About You?

Brother Bob: If you’re celebrating Easter, you’re probably one of three types of people. You may be like the first: you’re fully aware of everything about Easter, you’re aware of the origins of the Easter holiday, and, for you, it’s really nothing that you’re too concerned about. 

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1 – You’re fully aware of the origins of this holiday and it’s really nothing that you’re too concerned about.

Brother Bob: Or you might be the second type of person. Maybe it could be described like whether or not you know the origins, or you really know the history of Easter in the essence of this holiday for you, but it’s just fun, right? 

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2 – Whether or not you know its origins or history, in essence the holiday is just a fun thing to participate in.

Brother Bob: It’s nice to participate in the various traditions of Easter. Or you might be a third kind of person. You maybe don’t know much yet about Easter or the origins of the various Easter traditions, but you are interested to find out.

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3 – You don’t know much about Easter or the origins of its traditions, but are interested to find out.

Brother Bob: We challenge you. We ask you today to fit yourself into one of those personas as we go on in our study together. Our That’s in the Bible team went out right here in the San Francisco Bay trail. They gathered some video interviews of real people just talking about how they celebrate Easter. I’m very sure that many of the things that you’re about to hear may seem very familiar to you. Let’s take a moment and look.

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Do you celebrate Easter?

Interviewee 1: We celebrate Easter every year. 

Interviewee 2: Personally, my husband and I don’t really celebrate it.

Interviewee 3: I celebrate it at church and with my family.

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How do you celebrate Easter?

Interviewee 4: I celebrate it with the family. That’s the most important thing. So friends and stuff like that little most important family.

Interviewee 2: I don’t celebrate Easter by going to church, but I certainly do plan Easter egg hunts for my kids. 

Interviewee 1: I not only celebrate Easter at church, but I also celebrate with my family. 

Interviewee 4: You know, of course the Easter egg basket though

traditional stuff, but some of us go to church. Some don’t. Then we just get together and just eat and have a good time and celebrate.

Interviewee 3: Last year I did little goodie bags [that] said ‘Jesus is alive.’ 

Interviewee 5: Being Christian I go to church and put my family together. We pray. But of course, being here in Western country you have to do what kids like. So egg hunt for the kids!

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How do you prepare for Easter?

Interviewee 1: Well before that is Lent, I believe, and you’re supposed to give up stuff for Lent.

Interviewee 3: And as far as 40, the Lent thing, I grew up Catholic so I kind of used to do that but I didn’t really understand it. 

Interviewee 1: I was going to give up sweets or something this year, but anyway, not really good at giving up anything. 

Interviewee 2: We just try to say, “Hey, remember you celebrated Easter,” but not really opening up a Bible or something to explain to them what it is because we ourselves are not very educated in that area.

Interviewee 3: My family does that. It kind of kicks off the 40 days before Easter, which is the day Jesus rose from the dead.

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What do you know about Easter? 

Interviewee 2: So I don’t know. It’s just happy, fun, bunnies and stuff. Where I grew up from…grew up at and I’m not Christian so we were not educated

with it. 

Interviewee 3: I think it’s just mostly [a] time of just really reflecting on the reason why all this was happening and who Jesus was.

Interviewee 2: We still try to educate them [on] what it what it is. It’s not all about candy, right? But we certainly try to make it fun.

Interviewee 3: I’ve had funny stories like I’ve taught Sunday school on Easter, and we’ve asked the kids, like, “Where did the Easter eggs come from?” And one kid said, “Jesus laid them,” which is really funny, but, we had to tell them what the meaning was behind that. It’s just all symbolism, but what does it really mean? it just means new life that, you know, Jesus died so that we can live again with him.

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Brother Bob: So there you go, a full spectrum of ideas and perceptions of about Easter and how to celebrate it, and things like that, right? Now whether or not you celebrate Easter for its religious aspect, as you heard a couple of them say, or you’re just into it because well, it’s family fun time. 

As we saw, there’s a lot of ways to celebrate Easter being undertaken in the world nowadays. So what does celebrating Easter—back to our original question right? What does celebrating Easter, what does it really say about you? 

Easter symbols, traditions, and practices

Brother Bob: What we will do is briefly go over a few of the popular symbols, or let’s call them traditions, practices of this holiday called Easter. Let’s first start with the term itself—Easter. You might be surprised about the meaning of that term. According to the New Catholic Encyclopedia, let’s take a moment to read what is recorded here on on page 6: 

Since Bede the Venerable (De ratione temporum 1:5) “the origin of the term for the feast of Christ’s Resurrection has been popularly considered to be from the Anglo-Saxon Eastre, a goddess of spring. 

[New Catholic Encyclopedia Vol 5 Page 6]

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Pagan Fertility Goddess

Ishtar (Babylonian)

Ashtaroth (Hebrew)

Astarte (Greek)

Eastre (Anglo-Saxon)

Easter (English)

Brother Bob: Easter was also known to the Babylonians and others as Ishtar, Easter, and other similar names in ancient religions, all connected to what is now been Christian-ized into mainstream Christianity today.

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“Easter” – goddess of Fertility

Rabbit – Symbol of Fertility

Brother Bob: What’s another tradition of Easter? They said it on the video. Easter eggs. 

Audience: Eggs.

Brother Bob: And bunnies.

Audience : Bunnies.

Brother Bob: Easter eggs and Easter bunnies. By the way, just a little side biological note, bunnies don’t lay eggs. They’re mammals. But that’s another whole discussion. 

Easter Bunny, Easter eggs, and the symbols all of those kinds of symbols, which are quite synonymous with the Easter holiday. In this <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Catholic-D