Is It Easter​—or Astarte?

This family’s holiday festivities begin early in the morning as they rise to greet the sunrise with reverent awe. The children are decked in the best new finery, complete with new bonnets. The celebration includes emblems of rabbits, baskets full of gaily colored eggs, and hot cross buns. It must be Easter. Or is it?

Springtime was sacred to the sex worshipers of Phoenicia. Their fertility goddess, Astarte, or Ishtar (Aphrodite to the Greeks), had as her symbols the egg and the hare. She had an insatiable thirst for blood and immoral sex. Her statues variously depicted her as having rudely exaggerated sex organs or with an egg in her hand and a rabbit at her side. Sacred prostitution was part of her cult. In Canaan, the sex goddess was styled the wife of Baal. She was honored by drunken sex orgies, the worshipers believing that their sexual intercourse helped to bring about the full awakening and mating of Baal with his wife. According to the book Recent Discoveries in Bible Lands, “in no country has so relatively great a number of figurines of the naked goddess of fertility, some distinctly obscene, been found.”

Beneath memorials to her in Carthage, brightly colored urns were discovered containing the charred bones of little children. Their parents, commonly people of rank and title, sought the blessing of the gods on their wealth and influence. Some of the urns were found to contain the remains of several children of different ages, perhaps of the same family.

A look at the box above will show how thinly disguised the modern versions of these ancient rites are. Even the name Easter is barely different from the ancient pagan name. Is this, then, the way to honor the holy Son of God?

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The Rites of Spring

Easter was “originally the spring festival in honor of the Teutonic goddess of light and spring known in Anglo-Saxon as Eastre.” (The Westminster Dictionary of the Bible) “There is no indication of the observance of the Easter festival in the New Testament.”​—Encyclopædia Britannica.

The rabbit “was the escort of the Germanic goddess Ostara.”​—Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend.

Eggs “were said to be dyed and eaten at the spring festivals in ancient Egypt, Persia, Greece, and Rome.”​—Celebrations.

The Easter bonnet originally “was a wreath of flowers or leaves. The circle or crown expressed the round sun and its course in the heavens which brought the return of spring.” The new Easter outfit developed because “it was considered discourteous and therefore bad luck to greet the Scandinavian goddess of Spring, or Eastre, in anything but fresh garb, since the goddess was bestowing one on the earth.”​—The Giant Book of Superstitions.

Hot cross buns: “Like the Greeks, the Romans ate bread marked with a cross . . . at public sacrifices.” They were eaten by pagan Saxons in honor of Easter.​—Encyclopædia Britannica.

Sunrise services parallel rites “performed at the vernal equinox welcoming the sun and its great power to bring new life to all growing things.”​—Celebrations.