Christos voskrese, which means Christ has Risen, is the Easter greeting in Church Slavonic which brings the response Voistinu voskrese or Indeed, He has risen.
Easter, of course, celebrates the Resurrection of the Lord Jesus and the salvation of Man.
The date for Easter is the Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox, which is always reckoned, regardless of astronomical observations, to be March 31 as per the Western churches that use the Gregorian calendar, so Easter always falls between March 22 and April 25.
The dating for Easter correlates with the means the Jews once used to set the date for Passover, which correlates with Scripture since Scripture indicates that the Crucifixion of the Lord occurred as the lambs were being slaughtered for the celebration of that holiday.
In fact, in most Western languages the name for the day is a cognate of the Pesach which is the Hebrew name for Passover. In Latin it would be Pascha so Paschal lamb would be Passover lamb.
In English and German, the word comes from Eostre month, which was basically April, and which the pagans who spoke Germanic languages had named for the goddess Eostre much as our own March and April are named for the Greek god and goddess Mars and Aphrodite, respectively.
In Slavic, the holiday is called “Great Night” (Velikonoce in Slovak) or “Great Day” (Velikden in Ukrainian).
There are some caveats regarding the date. The Eastern churches that use the Julian calendar set the equinox at April 3, and, of course, the spring equinox is based on that of the Northern Hemisphere.
So, Christos Voskrese 2013.
Actually the only reason easter is today is because the pagens celebrated the equinox (birth and fertility) on the 21, and christians wanted to compete with it. It’s the same with christmas – they needed to compete with the solstice. It’s just random placement because they were threatened by other religions and wanted to convert them.
Re-read the article while asking:
Is today the equinox?
Why does the celebration of Easter correlate with the celebration of Passover?
Re-read my comment. I said they chose this day to compete with the equinox. They’re only a week and a half apart. Just like how Christmas is only 4 days from the solstice.
And don’t get me started on Passover. What god would kill a bunch of innocent kids to get his point across instead of offing the pharoh himself? Don’t you think that it’d be better to get rid of the actual guilty one? Lets not forget Jews were originally polytheistic.
I know you said the day was chosen to compete with the equinox. I was pointing out that it wasn’t. Sometimes Easter is a whole month from the equinox. It was not in the least bit designed to compete with pagan spring festivals.
The Jews were never polytheistic. Judaism starts with Abraham not with his father.
Would you feel any better if the Passover deaths were just random acts of natural evolution? Children die every day. Death is not the punishment. The removal of love and hope is the punishment. That’s what happened to Pharaoh.
And that’s why today is so important, for with today you can be certain that with death does not come the end of love and hope.
Haha that’s funny…..or as you say, “silly.”