In most European languages, the spring festival commemorating the resurrection of Christ is referred to by a name related to that of the Jewish Passover (Πάσχα in Greek, Pasqua in Italian, for example). In English, however, the festival is called Easter, and there are a few interesting possibilities for the origins of the word.
The OED provides one explanation. Eostre (or Eastre) was a pagan goddess, her festival being celebrated around the time of the spring equinox. It might have seemed natural for the early Christians in Britain to continue to use the name, even if the nature of the festival changed. However, not everyone agrees that there is quite such a direct link. The American Heritage dictionary, for example, highlights a presumed Indo-European root, aus- (to shine), which, since the sun rises in the east and the dawn is the time when we first see daylight, has led to derivatives such as east and aurora. The name Easter might be interpreted as the time when Christ, the Light, is risen – compare another Greek word for Easter, η Λαμπρή, from λάμπω (to shine).
Another (perhaps less convincing) theory is that the early Church may have referred to Easter week as hebdoma alba (white week) in reference to the white garments worn by the newly-baptized and that this may have been mistranslated as a reference to the dawn. Whatever the precise origins, clearly spring, the dawn and Christ’s resurrection are all related as times of renewal and rebirth and these ideas are all present in the word Easter.
The period of forty days leading up to Easter is known as Lent. This is a short form of Lenten (also used as an adjective), in Old English lencten, which may be a derivative of the Old Teutonic laego- (long). The reference is to spring as a time when the days lengthen towards the equinox, when the day and night are of equal length, the word equinox being derived from Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night). The last day before Lent starts, on Ash Wednesday, is Shrove Tuesday, also referred to as Pancake Day. The name Shrove Tuesday derives from the verb shrive (hear the confession of), because the faithful would make their confession before the fasting period began.
