Spring Equinox is approaching which means it’s time for the annual debunking of the BS that gets spouted about Eostre. There is only one historical reference to Eostre and it is in Bede’s history of the English church.
The egg is associated with Easter because there’s a legend about Mary Magdalene and an egg that turned red.
In European folklore, many animals bring eggs in the spring, including foxes, storks, and hares (not rabbits).
Ostara is not even an ancient goddess, she’s a conjectural back-formation by a 19th century German folklorist.
The Old English (aka Anglo-Saxons) didn’t celebrate the spring equinox, they celebrated the fourth full moon of the year with a feast of beef.
By all means celebrate whatever you like at Spring Equinox—but if you celebrate a goddess of eggs and bunnies and a festival called Ostara, don’t go claiming it’s ancient. The name Ostara was applied to the festival in 1974 by Aidan Kelly 🙄
Also Easter is only called Easter in English (it’s called some variation on Pascha in every other European language) so there’s absolutely no connection to the goddess Ishtar.
Visit my 2018 post to learn more about the real history of the Spring Equinox:
Dowsing for Divinity 
4 responses to “Eostre and Easter”
Thank you for this.
One small point. The German word for Easter is Ostern which seems to derived from the name of a Teutonic goddess of dawn calles Austrô
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Great point, thank you for sharing!
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ah, thank you!
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Everyone ought to give Philip Shaw’s book ‘Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostre, Hreda and the Cult of Matrons’ a read.
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