I have celebrated Easter my entire life. The family traditions of Easter baskets filled with candy and toys were something I looked forward to every year as a child. As I got older and began having children of my own, I relished in starting my own family traditions. When my kids were old enough I would help them dye boiled eggs and I would carefully pick out special treats and toys to fill up their Easter baskets. I would even hide plastic eggs filled with candy in the yard, and tell my kids the Easter Bunny put them there. I would watch with joy as my kids ran around looking for their hidden treasure.
I can’t ever say that Easter was about Jesus during all these years. Not until my first year as a Christian, when I started to understand who Jesus Christ was and what His death and resurrection meant for me. The church I was a member of celebrated Lent and all of Holy Week with great festivities. On Ash Wednesday I would take my children to receive the ashes on our foreheads in a solemn service and on Palm Sunday the entire kids ministry would dress up and carry palm branches in a triumphant parade through the sanctuary.
I would sing with the choir and remember everything that Jesus had done for us. I would rejoice and cry, knowing what a wonderful Savior I had. It was a big change for me from so many years of celebrating a holiday in which I had no idea what it was for. It was a chance to be thankful for the life that Jesus Christ died to give me: a life redeemed.
According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
1 Peter 1:3
However as I began to dive deeply into my inner healing I began to learn some deep and painful truths about my life. I was a victim of Satanic ritual abuse for my entire life. In Satanism they have many days where they hold rituals to mark special days and seasons, as well as many other things. They do terrible things to people, including sacrificial murder and blood letting. These are terrible things that no one wants to think about or believe are real. Yet they are.
As I began to learn more about the things that had happened to me in these terrible rituals, I also began to understand how many of these rituals coincided with holidays I had celebrated my whole life. Such as Halloween and Easter. As a survivor of this terrible trauma, you begin to see days where the world sees nothing but fun, as days that are filled with terror and suffering. I may not be that victim anymore, but there are still so many who are.
Holy Week is a very important time for the Christian and Catholic communities. It is a time where believers in Christ can come together in unity and remember Jesus last days, and honor Him for His work on the cross. It all ends with a time of rejoicing on Easter Sunday, where we unite in rejoicing for our salvation in Christ. However, it is also a time where Satan uses people to celebrate acts of death and sacrifice for his purposes. The days observed by Christians to remember Christ sacrifice are days used by Satanists to perform human sacrifices.
Why is it important we know this? How does this really affect the average Christian in their every day walk with Christ? While it may seem unimportant to most, the fact of the matter is that it should be of the utmost importance to us, because it’s something that weighs deeply on the Father’s heart. While we are carrying on our traditions of man in the way that we see fit, Satan has used it as a perversion to steal the lives of the innocent. For this we should be very concerned.
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ.
Colossians 2:8
How many times have you wondered where we get our Christian traditions surrounding Easter? Have you ever questioned why you fill a basket with treats for your children or why you decorate your home with colorful eggs and bunnies? So many of us, like myself, have had these traditions handed down to us for generations, and because we see everyone else we know doing the same types of things, we never once question what we are doing. We love our traditions because they bring us comfort and joy. The problem is we as a people group have learned to derive our comfort and joy from traditions, and not God.
I do not believe God is angry at us for following the ways of a pagan world in celebrating His great and glorious works. God is not a legalist and He understands that we have walked in ignorance. Yet God does want us to stop and ask questions about what we are celebrating and where it came from. He wants us to no longer be ignorant and do things blindly, but to start looking to our Father for the truth and for His will in this matter.
Easter is a holiday that was first celebrated by the first Christians as Passover. After the Exodus of Israel from Egypt, where they were enslaved for hundreds of years, God commanded His people to observe a new festival. The feast of Passover was to remind God’s children of the freedom they received at the hands of their Father. The early church recognized that Passover became a new covenant with God’s people to be a time where we are to commemorate Jesus as the Passover lamb.
As time went on and many pagans came into salvation through Christ, they began to bring in the traditions they carried with them for generations. Traditions of celebrating new life, rebirth, fertility and the spring equinox fit in perfectly with the idea of the death and resurrection of Christ. As the early church began to explode with new converts, Christians could’t help but adapt their pagan ways to their new Christian beliefs.
Get rid of the old yeast, so that you may be a new unleavened batch—as you really are. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old bread leavened with malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
1 Corinthians 5:7-8
In early 300 A.D., Christianity moved from a persecuted religion to an accepted and legal religion. The First Council of Nicaea was born to bring uniformity to Christian doctrine. One of it’s acts was to bring more stability to the date that the church celebrated the Resurrection by setting it on a Sunday. Previously, most of the church was celebrating the Resurrection during the Passover, but there had already been some sects that were diverging from this tradition according to changing doctrines. The date of Passover could land on any day of the week according to the Jewish calendar, and Christians wanted to be independent from the Jewish community, establishing their own rites and traditions.
So it was ruled that the new date of Easter would be celebrated on the first Sunday after the Paschal (Passover) full moon, that way Easter would usually fall after the date of Passover. The Paschal full moon is the first full moon after the Spring Equinox, which occurs on either the 14th or 15th of Nisan or Passover and often Easter is the very next day.
During this same time of year, the pagans (technically non Christians) celebrate the Spring Equinox . Since ancient times people have celebrated according to the seasons of the earth. Spring was an important time of celebration because it was a time where the earth began to wake up after a long sleep. Food had become scarce after long winters and now the sun was beginning to stay out longer, bringing warmth and light. With the awakening of the earth, it meant more food and time for hunting and gathering for the people.
Celebrating spring naturally aligned with the deities that represented the spring. Deities for new life, fertility, birth and rebirth, renewal and the coming of new light. Traditions included rituals meant to honor these deities to bring about favor and blessing on the people. Little did these people groups know that their rituals were actually honoring demons and nephilim who were able to appear to man and work what looked like miracles, affecting change in their lives.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
Romans 1:21-23
These so called deities could appear as beautiful or terrifying, killing crops or bestowing what looked like good fortune on the land, influencing the people to worship them. Rituals often included sexual perversions such as orgies and sodomy,as well as dedication of children to these deities for sexual purposes. Elaborate community rituals were common place in ancient times and in the Bible the goddess Ashtoreth or Asherah is frequently mentioned. Ashtoreth was a fertility goddess and the consort of Molech, the god of child sacrifice.
As time went on many religions brought in their fertility symbols. During the Anglo Saxon era, Ostara became the goddess that was celebrated in the spring. Using symbols of eggs for fertitlity and new life, this day brought forth traditions of decorating eggs as a symbol of prosperity and abundance. Ostara has many myths surrounding her that link her with the hare. Some myths have this goddess depicted with the head of a hare or as a hare, and other myths depicted the hare as her favorite animal, which would lay eggs.
Over time traditions evolved to include the Easter Bunny and Easter baskets full of candy. The traditions came in to America with immigrants in the 17th century, turning Easter in to what we now know. With the symbolism of new life and renewal of the spring, it was easy to combine with the traditions of the Resurrection of Christ. The church welcomed this amalgamation of paganism and Christianity, as it made converts feel more comfortable.
For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.
Hosea 6:6
The pagan traditions of ritualistic sex and child dedication are still alive today. Many traditions and sects call it Ostara today, and all of these rituals, whether they are sexual in nature or not, are in honor of the demonic deities that they have been worshiping for centuries. Whatever name the goddess has, it is still a demonic entity, and a celebration of witchcraft and satanism. While most pagans who celebrate these spring festivals do not believe they are in alignment with evil in any way, you cannot separate the two.
Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday are Satanic ritual days. They are days where death, blood letting, and human sacrifice are ritualized in satanic celebrations. Real people in America and all over the world are being harmed in this depraved and inhumane rituals; adults and children alike. While Christians are flocking to church to celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ, hundreds, if not thousands of innocents are being defiled.
Does that make it wrong to celebrate Easter or the Resurrection of Christ? Does that mean a Christian who celebrates Easter is going to be condemned by God? Absolutely not. God understands that we as Christians have been walking in complete ignorance and training from the world. We have grown up celebrating Easter with traditions that have been handed down through our families, year after year. We have as innocent babes grown to love the goodness and joy of what we see in these traditions. God does not condemn us for our ignorance.
The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”
Acts 17:30
However, we cannot continue to be lead astray by the traditions of man, which were taught to us by demons. We have to allow ourselves to be humble enough to see that we cannot take satanic rituals and symbols and use them to honor Christ. We have done so out of ignorance in the past, and now it is time to take a stand for God’s truth. We honor Christ not with our traditions, but with full surrender and sacrifice of our lives to Him.
Our God and Father is not honored by superficial sacrifices. There is not Christ in eggs and bunnies and man made dates set aside out of convenience and independence from God’s appointed feast days. We need to turn our faces back to the Father in repentance and allow Him to teach us His ways. Our Father is a kind and loving Father. He understands the difficulty of a huge separation like removing Easter traditions from our lives. He is patient and slow to anger. He will lead us and guide us, day by day and year by year, in His appointed festivals and how they are to be recognized.
This is not a call to stop celebrating Easter. This is a call of repentance of a great falling away. It was not started by us, but by many generations before us. This is our time to come before the Father and repent on behalf of our ancestors, so we can move forward in teaching our children the ways of Christ and not man. It is the job of each of us to grow into completion and maturity, through testing our faith and petitioning God for His wisdom and knowledge.
God loves each one of us dearly. There is no condemnation in Christ. We have been grafted int as a Royal Priesthood of Saints. We need to focus our eyes on Christ and allow Him to lead us in everything we do, remembering His love and complete devotion to us. If Christ was willing to sacrifice everything for us, then He deserves all of our honor and glory and praise. He is ever loyal to us, so let us devote ourselves wholly to Him. It may take a life time for us to learn how, but it only takes a moment to decide to make the choice.
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
