Why Do We Celebrate Easter? Here's the Real Story
Easter is this Sunday and whether you're heading to church, hiding eggs in the backyard, or just eating your weight in chocolate — it's worth knowing where all of it actually comes from.
The Heart of It
For Christians, Easter is the biggest day of the year. Bigger than Christmas. It marks the resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after his crucifixion by Romans in 30 A.D. and it is the event that the entire Christian faith is built around.
"It's the church's highest feast because without it there will be no church," said Ulrich Lehner, theology professor at the University of Notre Dame.
Christmas gets more attention in popular culture but Easter carries more theological weight. The birth of Jesus was meaningful — but the resurrection is the foundation. Without it, everything else falls apart.
"Easter basically means the triumph over death," said Nadieszda Kizenko, director of religious studies at the University at Albany.
The 40 days leading up to it are called Lent — a season of prayer, fasting, and reflection. Easter Sunday closes out Holy Week, which walks through the final days of Christ's life from the Last Supper through the crucifixion and resurrection.
Why the Date Is Different Every Year
Easter moves around because it follows the lunar calendar. It lands on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the spring equinox — which usually falls around March 20 or 21. That puts Easter anywhere between March 22 and April 25 depending on the year.
So Where Did the Bunny Come From?
Honestly the Easter Bunny has nothing to do with the resurrection. Rabbits were symbols of fertility and new life in Pagan tradition long before Christianity existed. That symbolism eventually made its way into German folklore and showed up in America in the late 18th century — and it stuck.
"Fertility means new life," Lehner said. "In Christianity you have this new life in Easter. It's a symbol that's good and imaginative and in people's memory."
The eggs have a better origin story. Dyeing eggs dates back to the ancient Middle East — people used onion skins to color them. In the early church, Lent meant giving up meat and dairy including eggs. After seven weeks without them, eating eggs again was genuinely worth celebrating.
"Being able to eat eggs once again was a really big deal," Kizenko said. "After seven weeks of not eating meat or dairy you feel like Superman."
Decorating and sharing those eggs became a tradition and here we are two thousand years later with pastel plastic eggs full of jelly beans.
What It Looks Like Now
Some families spend Easter Sunday at church. Some spend it hiding eggs in the grass and watching kids lose their minds over candy. A lot of families do both and feel no tension about it whatsoever.
The secular traditions have taken on a life of their own — $24.9 billion worth of Easter spending in 2026 according to the National Retail Federation, which tells you everything about how far the holiday has traveled from its origins.
But for the roughly 2 billion Christians around the world who observe it, none of that changes what Sunday actually means.
Death didn't win. That's the whole point.
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