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Each spring, sometime between March 22 and April 25, on the Sunday following the vernal equinox of that year (T. R. F., 1999), we observe Easter. Each year in our city, the Easter public holidays (Friday through Monday) provide stressed-out Hong Kongers an annual exercise in stretching four annual leave days into potentially ten consecutive days away (assuming no work on Saturdays). For us this year, taking April 14-17 as annual leave creates an April 12-21 holiday, while taking April 22-25 creates an April 18-27 getaway period of time. Traditional Easter weekend celebrations vary greatly, ranging from sunrise worship services and candlelit vigils to kid-friendly outdoor activities such as Easter egg hunts on a local beach (Sassy Mama, 2025). How did Easter get to be this way today? This blog article will fill in some facts about how Easter has developed over history. Beyond providing facts that you can share with friends while on a holiday hike, this blog article will highlight the importance of the resurrection and examine one account, in Luke 24:1-12, drawing lessons for our spiritual lives today.

In Easter We Hope Hop?

No one knows for sure the origin of the term Easter. Some agree with seventh-century Anglo-Saxon historian Bede, who contended that it originated from the name of the fourth month, Eosturmonath, itself derived from Eostre, the name of a Scandinavian goddess of fertility (Sanna, 2018). Apparently, eggs and rabbits symbolized fertility and were associated with Eostre, so they became connected to Easter as well (Sanna, 2018). Another story claimed that Easter originated from the Germanic word ostern, used to indicate the rising of dawn, toward the east (Bishop, 2013). A third version claimed that Easter arose from another German word that described the white robes worn by those readied for baptism during the week before (Sanna, 2018). Whatever version you favor, the terms used obscure the original meaning behind the holiday.

A Brief History

The Paschal Celebration

Easter actually developed from the Jewish Passover (Bishop, 2013). In fact, before the name Easter came to be, the celebration was called Pascha, because of its association with Jewish Passover (Gregg, 2000). The last supper that Jesus had with his disciples, the night before His crucifixion, fell on the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when the Passover lamb was to be sacrificed (New International Version Bible, 2011, Matt 26:17, Mark 14:12, Luke 22:7). Paul wrote: “For Christ, our Passover lamb has been sacrificed” (I Cor 5:7), being the first to associate the risen Jesus with Passover (Sanna, 2018).

Sanna (2018) made a claim that indicated that early believers did not simply remember Jesus’s resurrection on the third day: they also honored His passion (or suffering) and crucifixion along with the resurrection in their feasts (T. R. F., 1999). Taken together, Jesus’s suffering, death, and resurrection make up the “‘paschal mystery’” or celebration observed each year (T.R.F., 1999, para. 1).

A Question of When

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But on what day was the paschal celebration to be observed? This was no easy discussion. Some believed that during the Saturday evening Easter vigil, Jesus would return (cf. Matt 24:43, I Thess 5:2, and Rev 16:15) (T. R. F., 1999). Bishop (2013) explained that

The early development of the celebration of Easter and the attendant calendar disputes were largely a result of Christianity’s attempt to emancipate itself from Judaism. Sunday had already replaced the Jewish sabbath early in the second century, and despite efforts in Asia Minor to maintain the Jewish Passover date of Nisan 14 for Easter (hence the name Quartodecimans), the Council of Nicea adopted the annual Sunday following the full moon after the vernal equinox (March 21).

Freeing itself from Judaism, Christianity nonetheless continued to splinter as it could not unify around how to reconcile calendars to arrive at a date each year (Bishop, 2013). For example, today the Eastern Orthodox Church follows an older calendar, so its Easter may occur at a variance of up to five weeks from that of other Christian traditions (Bishop, 2013).

Passing into Life, Less the Passion

As mentioned above, the paschal celebration combined Jesus’s passion, death on a cross, and resurrection into one whole. During one historical period, believers combined forty days of fasting prior to His passion culminating with the resurrection with fifty days of rejoicing immediately afterwards, resulting in one quarter of the year centered around the Easter celebration (Bradshaw, 1999).

However, over time the remembrance of Jesus’s suffering and crucifixion became disconnected from the celebration of the resurrection. His passion gave way to a focus on the resurrection as the “passage” or transition from death to life (Bradshaw, 1999, p.1). What began with the inclusion of Jesus’s suffering as the lamb for the sins of the world (I Cor 15:4) had yielded to a narrower focus on His passage from death to life via resurrection (Bradshaw, 1999). As various observances such as the vigil were no longer practiced, Easter became “much like any other Sunday of the year” (Bradshaw, 1999, p. 5).

Debates on when to observe Easter, how to observe it, and what to include in its observance demonstrate how easily we can lose sight of essential lessons it can hold for our lives. Let’s turn now to what is significant about Easter.

Resurrection of the Body

The Christian doctrine of the resurrection also developed from Judaism. Plato believed the soul possessed “a natural immortality, something that is true of the soul by reason of its very nature,” but the Jewish and Christian belief was in the resurrection of the body, with “a created or a conditional immortality of the soul dependent on the grace and power of God” (Ferguson, 1993, p. 314). More than simply a sense of eternity placed into individual hearts (Eccl 3:11), resurrection was physical, of the body. Luke highlighted a bodily resurrection as he described Jesus’s appearance and conversation with the disciples in 24:36-43 (Blomberg, 1997). The risen Christ spoke to Mary, saying, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father,” and to Thomas, saying, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side” (John 20:17, 27).

Furthermore, Paul insisted on the importance of a resurrected Christ, teaching those in Corinth who doubted:

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.

I Cor 15: 12-14

Paul emphasized all aspects of the celebration: Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection (I Cor 15:3-5), but Jesus raised from the dead was key, leading Paul to declare that, if Christ had not been raised, then the faith was “futile,” and Christians were “to be pitied more than all men” (I Cor 15: 17-18). Paul doubled down on the fact of the risen Christ, and so should we.

Armed with this firm belief, let’s now review the disciples’ first encounter with the empty tomb, Luke 24:1-12, and consider how they began to process that Jesus had risen from the dead.

From Perplexity to Amazement: What Would You Think?

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Luke 24:1 reveals how the women set out early on the first day to care for Jesus’s body. They had prepared spices, but “found the stone rolled away from the tomb” (24:2). Entering the tomb and not finding the body of Christ (24:3), they were left “wondering” (24:4). The Greek word is aporeó, meaning “to be perplexed, to be at a loss, to be in doubt” (Strong’s Greek, n.d.-a, 639). The women were indeed perplexed, but they fearfully took in the words of two men wearing “clothes that gleamed like lightning” (24:4), who declared that Jesus had truly risen from the dead (24:5-6). Then the men focused the perplexed women back onto what Jesus had said before:

Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered over to the hands of sinners, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’” Then they remembered his words.

Luke 24: 6b-8

Flashes of divine insight like this happened repeatedly in Luke’s account. Disciples experienced them a second time, on the road to Emmaus, when “their eyes were opened and they recognized Him” (24:31). On yet another occasion, Jesus “opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures” (24:46).

In Luke 24:9, the women returned to the Eleven and to the other disciples, telling them all that they had seen and were beginning to understand. Luke recorded that “Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James” (24:10) were the first witnesses of the resurrection.¹ However, the men did not believe the women, “because their words seemed to them like nonsense” (24:11).

Unsatisfied, Peter ran to the tomb (24:12), recalling a similar scene in the Fourth Gospel (John 20:4). The NIV described Peter as walking away from the empty tomb “wondering to himself what had happened” (Luke 24:12), using the same English verb, to wonder, that described the women’s state of mind in Luke 24:4. However, the Greek word here is not aporeó, to be perplexed (Strong’s Greek, n.d.-a), as used in Luke 24:4: it is actually another Greek word, thaumazó, and means “to marvel, to wonder, to be amazed” (Strong’s Greek, n.d.-b, 2296). Peter marveled at what had happened, suggesting more belief. The empty tomb initially perplexed the women, so they returned to tell the others, whereas Peter walked away from the empty tomb where the strips of linen lay, amazed (24:12).

Conclusion

Easter is more than eggs and bunnies. The public holiday gives us time to relax, but even more, to dwell on what Jesus did for us. He suffered willingly, died ignobly, and then God raised him physically from the dead. History reminds us that we too easily major in the minors and forget that Jesus was raised from the dead, a result of his perfect suffering and death. Now risen, Christ walks before us. The challenge for you and me is to believe this reality, walk as Jesus did, and take on Jesus’s motivations as our own (Hartog, 2022). As Paul said,

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Phil 3:10-11

May we strive for and desire the same.

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Questions for Individual or Group Discussion

1. How do you think about the resurrection? Peter ran to the tomb to see for himself. What is your conviction about it? Are you still amazed?
2. Does your faith in Jesus’s resurrection impact your daily life? Does it motivate you to share the gospel? Or say no to temptation?
3. Do you consider suffering to be a normal part of a Christian’s journey toward eternity?
4. Peter experienced amazing things in his life. He walked on water (Matt 14:29), had an angel free him from jail (Acts 12:7-9), and encountered the risen Jesus, just to name a few. Can you recall an amazing experience that God has blessed you with in your life? How does recalling that experience motivate you, going forward?
5. Create a special moment to remember Jesus’s sacrifice, death, and resurrection in your own way during the Easter holidays.

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References

Bishop, R., K. (2013). Easter. In W. A. Elwell, Evangelical dictionary of theology (2nd ed.). Baker Publishing Group. https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6ODY2NjYz?aid=240921

Blomberg, C. L. (1997). Jesus and the Gospels: An introduction and survey. Broadman & Holman.

Bradshaw, P. F. (1999). Easter in Christian tradition. In P. F. Bradshaw & L. A. Hoffman (Eds.) Passover and Easter: Origin and history to modern times (pp. 1–7). University of Notre Dame Press.

Ferguson, E. (1993). Backgrounds of early Christianity (2nd Ed.). Eerdmans.

Gregg, D. L. (2000). Easter. In D. N. Freedman, A.C. Myers, & A. B. Beck (Eds.), Eerdmans dictionary of the Bible (pp. 362-363). Eerdmans.

Hartog, P. A. (2022). Johannine ethics: An exegetical-theological summary and a ‘desiderative’ extension of mimesis. Religions, 13(6), 503, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13060503

Sanna, E. (2018). Why do we call the resurrection “Easter”? U.S. Catholic, 83(4), 49.

Sassy Mama. (2025, March 17). The most exciting Easter egg hunts and Easter holiday activities in Hong Kong. https://www.sassymamahk.com /easter-brunches-and-easter-egg-hunt/?_sf_s

Strong’s Greek. (n.d.-a). 639. ἀπορέω (aporeó) — to be perplexed, to be at a loss, to be in doubt. https://biblehub.com/greek/639.htm

Strong’s Greek. (n.d.-b). 2296. θαυμάζω (thaumazó) — to marvel, to wonder, to be amazed. https://biblehub.com/greek/2296.htm

T., R., F. (1999). Easter. In G. W. Bowersock, P. R. L. Brown, & O. Grabar (Eds.), Late antiquity: A guide to the postclassical world (1st ed.). Harvard University Press. https://search.credoreference.com/articles/Qm9va0FydGljbGU6MjA2MjAwMA==?aid=240921

1. While beyond the scope of this article, Blomberg (1997) put forward a plausible harmonization of the resurrection accounts found in the gospels. ↩︎