Easter

Easter is a holiday celebrated in many countries. In America, it is a holiday that is half or fully celebrated as Jesus' resurrection by some Christians, and half or fully celebrated as a sort of children's spring/fertility holiday by Christians and non-Christians alike. Some of the symbols of Easter, depending on how you celebrate the holiday includes: Easter eggs (colored and decorated), chicks, rabbits, chocolate, and new grass. 
== History ==
Easter in the Christian sense is a holiday derived from celebrating Jesus Christ's resurrection from the cross.
Easter is currently considered to have derived from Eostre, a hypothetical Teutonic Pagan Goddess.https://www.enotes.com/topics/history/questions/when-was-easter-first-celebrated-colonial-103923 Wiccans celebrate the holiday Eostre/Ostara at the Spring Equinox. People have hypothesized about how rabbits and eggs would have been important to her fertility cult.https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%C4%92ostre&oldid=1147971088 Julius Caeser is reported to have said that the ancient Britains did not eat domesticated rabbits and chickens and that they were considered to be pets. Archeological evidence shows that these animals were buried "carefully", suggesting that their remains were not dumped or scattered about in the fashion or the way people did to the bones of animals they had been eating. An article was written about this, pointing it out as a connection to Easter.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/leap-of-faith-ancient-britons-viewed-hares-chickens-as-gods-easter 
The Native Americans, of course, did not have Easter, as it was a Christian holiday. Many of the first Christians in America didn't celebrate it, as the English cultural trend at the time forbade it. However, some Catholics in Virginia were known to have celebrated it, as well German and Norwegian colonists. It took until after the Civil War, when people felt the religious pain of Christ's scars in their war, that they started to take it up as a formal, larger, public holiday. 
The Easter parade didn't start until the mid-1870s in New York. 
In modern America, Easter in the latter sense as a spring festival is a huge event and many corporations and media partake in it. There are many episode and movie specials dedicated to Easter. Easter baskets, fake grass, plastic eggs, and chocolate bunnies and eggs are sold during this time of year. 
== References ==
Category:Holidays
Category:Easter
Category:Rabbits
Category:Chickens
Category:Eggs
Category:Christian mythology
Category:Wiccan mythology