What Are Decent Easter Traditions To Follow Each Year?

Easter traditions are a big part of the spring time holiday. These traditions link back to not only religious aspects of the holiday, but also pagan and seasonal aspects of spring.
The first of the Easter traditions to examine is the name of the holiday itself. What many people don't realize is that most of the world names Easter based on a different root word than the English word, Easter. In English the word Easter derives from the Old English word Eostre, relating to the name of a month in the Germanic calendar. But the etymology for the word most other languages use, for example the Spanish la Pascua, is back to Greek Pascha for Passover. An egg carrying goddess from Anglo-Saxon pagan mythology, Eostre, is also considered a source of the English word Easter.
The Jewish holiday Passover has more to do with Easter Traditions than just a name. The Last Supper, which came just before Jesus' crucifixion, took place during or just prior to Passover. In addition much of the symbolism for Easter is similar to the symbolism for Passover because both holidays are about renewed life. At Easter, the religious tradition is that Jesus rose from the dead. Passover celebrates the sparing of Jewish children by the angel of death as it traveled through Egypt killing all first born sons. Therefore both have to do with various life symbols such as eggs and the baby chicks that come from them, and the new life returned during spring.
Easter traditions are nothing without a date for the holiday, and this date too was long associated with the date of Passover. Easter, like Passover, isn't on a specific day but rather is set according to moon and solar phases, particularly the vernal equinox and the full moon. Up until the 4th century AD Christians depended on Jewish scholars to calculate the dates for Passover, and then would base the date for Easter on that either on the Jewish date of preparing for Passover or on the first Sunday following that date. But that changed in 325 AD when the 1st Council of Nicaea decided that Easter would no longer rely on Jewish calculations for Passover Disputes over the Easter date continue until this day. There are 35 possible dates for Easter in the Gregorian calendar used in America. It's a very long cycle over 5 millions years in total. Easter Sunday was March 23, 2008, and it won't be repeated on March 23 again until 2160.
There are more Easter traditions than can be covered in a single article. A quick search on Google should return a lot more information for those who want to learn more about Easter traditions.

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