This year, Easter falls on the earliest weekend it can - the Sunday, two days, after the vernal equinox.
"The word "Easter" is derived from Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, to whom Eostur-monath, corresponding to our month of April, was dedicated. The modern English term Easter developed from the Old English word Eastre. The Old English term Eastre ultimately derives from ēast - meaning the direction of east. This suggests it originally referred to a goddess associated with dawn. Corresponding traditions occur with the Roman goddess Aurora and the Greek goddess Eos.
In olden time the English people..calculated their months according to the course of the moon. Hence after the manner of the Hebrews and the Greeks, [the months] take their name from the moon, for the moon is called mona and the month monath. April, Eostur-monath has a name which was once called after a goddess of theirs named Eostre, in whose honor feasts were celebrated in that month. As a goddess of spring, she presides over the realm of the conception and birth of babies, both animal and human, and of the pollination, flowering and ripening of fruits in the plant kingdom. The Anglo-Saxon month name equates to an Old High German equivalent, Ostara. Ostara is also one of the names of the mother-archetype noted in the psychology of Carl Jung and a neo-pagan ritual in celebration of the vernal equinox.
Many ancient cultures have a strong association with animals. The forming of candy into the shape of rabbits or chicks is a way to acknowledge them as symbols; by eating them, we take on their characteristics, and enhance our own fertility, growth and vitality. The dyeing of eggs is from a Greek tradition where they were painted red and given as gifts. And in the Celtic traditions of giving gifts to faeries the night before, this equinox is honored with sweets and honey. The only Easter custom mentioned from ancient Germanic traditions are Easter Bonfires (Osterfeuer).
"This Ostarâ, like the AS [Anglo-Saxon], Eástre, must in the heathen religion have denoted a higher being, whose worship was so firmly rooted, that the Christian teachers tolerated the name, and applied it to one of their own grandest anniversaries."
