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Showing posts with the label easter

What is Lent?

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Lent is the word Christians use to describe the forty days leading up to  Easter .

Why do we say 'Good' Friday?

It may seem odd that Christians call their day  of greatest sorrow   Good Friday .  The confusion arises from how we perceive the word 'Good'. Here it is used in the archaic sense of 'holy' or momentous. Good Friday, called  Feria VI in  Parasceve  in the  Roman Missal ,  he hagia kai megale paraskeue  (the  Holy  and Great Friday) in the  Greek Liturgy ,  Holy Friday  in Romance Languages,  Charfreitag  (Sorrowful Friday) in  German , is the  English  designation of Friday in  Holy Week     source In other words,  Good marks the uniqueness of the Passion . It affirms the centrality of the crucifixion and resurrection to the Christian faith. Short essay :  Where does the word Easter come from? Passover? Good Friday?

Where does the word Easter come from?

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The word Easter is not in the New Testament. Nor does it feature in most translations of the Bible into vernacular languages.  Isn't Easter  linked to Passover? There is no direct linguistic link in English  between the  words  Easter  and   Passover .  This contrasts with the convention in Romance languages. Pâques, in French, covers both  Easter  and Passover . In Spanish,  Semana Santa (Holy Week) is the most common phrase used to describe the festival. So where does the word  Easter come from?      Scholars agree that Easter  has pre-Christian roots. Beyond that there is little consensus. According to the great Anglo-Saxon scholar the  Venerable Bede , the Old English word eastre came from Eostre, "a goddess associated with spring."   April was called Eosturmonath  ("Easter-month") because in pagan times the month was dedicated to Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring.   The Canadian Oxford Dictionary suggests a link to the Germanic goddess