EASTER, the most important of all Christian feasts, celebrates the passion, the death, and especially the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The English name Easter, like the German Ostern, probably derives from Eostur, the Norse word for the spring season, and not from Eostre, the name of an Anglo-Saxon goddess. In Romance languages the name for Easter is taken from the Greek Pascha, which in turn is derived from the Hebrew Pesaḥ (Passover). Thus Easter is the Christian equivalent of the Jewish Passover, a spring feast of both harvest and deliverance from bondage. The Eastern Slavs call Easter "the great day" and greet one another, as do the Greeks, with the words "Christ is risen," receiving the response "He is risen indeed."

Easter is the earliest of all annual Christian feasts. It may originally have been observed in conjunction with the Jewish Passover on the fourteenth day of the...