Herbert W Armstrong explains the true pagan origins of Easter on The World Tomorrow program in the early 1980's. If Christ died on the cross on Friday before sunset on Friday and arose Sunday morning, how can you figure 3 days and 3 nights? Now you can understand the true pagan origins of Easter and what the bible actually says about Christ's resurrection which is NOT on Sunday, The truth in your bible will shock you!
In some countries where Christianity is a state religion, or where the country has large Christian population, Easter is a public holiday. Some European and other countries in the world have also Easter Monday as a public holiday.
United States & Canada
In the United States, Easter Sunday is a flag day but has not been a federal and state holiday due to falling on a Sunday, which is already a non working day for federal and state employees. However, nearly every retail store, shopping malls and some restaurants are closed on Easter Sunday. Few banks that are normally open on regular Sundays are closed on Easter. Two days before Easter Sunday, on Good Friday, is a holiday in 12 states. Most private businesses and sectors, as well as financial and stock market, and public schools are closed on Good Friday. Historically, schools have given extended spring breaks of one to two weeks around the Easter holiday, but this practice has been declining in favor of fixed one-week recesses around Washington's Birthday and in late April.Many Americans follow the tradition of coloring hard-boiled eggs and giving baskets of candy. The Easter Bunny is a popular legendary anthropomorphic Easter gift-giving character analogous to Santa Claus in American culture. On Easter Monday, the President of the United States holds an annual Easter egg roll on the White House lawn for young children. New York City holds an annual Easter parade on Easter Sunday.
In Canada, both Easter Sunday and Easter Monday are public holidays. In province of Quebec, either Good Friday or Easter Monday (although most companies give both) are statutory holidays. Two days before Easter Sunday, on Good Friday, is a public holiday as well.
Scandinavia
In Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, both Easter Sunday and Easter Monday are public holidays. It is a holiday for most workers except some shopping malls which keep open for half day. Many businesses give their employees almost a week off called Easter break.
Along with Christmas celebrations, many Easter traditions ultimately became casualties of the various off-shoots of the Protestant Reformation, being deemed "pagan" or "Popish" (and therefore tainted) by many Puritan movements[citation needed] - although there were some major Reformation Churches and movements (Lutheran, Methodist and Anglican for example), that chose to retain a reasonably full observance of the Church Year and many of its associated traditions. In Lutheran Churches, for example, not only were the days of Holy Week observed, but also Christmas, Easter and Pentecost were observed with three day festivals, including the day itself and the two following.
Among many other Reformation and counter Counter-Reformation traditions, however, things were a very different, with most Anabaptists, Quakers, Congregational and Presbyterian Puritans, regarding such festivals as an abomination. The Puritan rejection of Easter traditions was (and is) based partly upon their interpretation of 2 Corinthians 6:14-16 and partly upon a more general belief that if a religious practice or celebration is not actually written in the Old and/or New Testaments of the Christian Bible then that practice/celebration must be a later development and cannot be considered an authentic part of Christian practice or belief - so at best simply unnecessary, at worst actually "sinful".
Some Christian groups continue to reject the celebration of Easter, due to perceived pagan roots and historical connections to the practices and permissions of the "Roman" Catholic Church. Other "Nonconformist" Christian groups that do still celebrate the event prefer to call it "Resurrection Sunday" or "Resurrection Day",[citation needed] for the same reasons as well as a rejection of secular or commercial aspects of the holiday in the 20th and 21st centuries.
The Jehovah's Witnesses maintain a similar view, observing a yearly commemorative service of the Last Supper and subsequent execution of Christ on the evening of Nisan 14, as they calculate it derived from the lunar Hebrew Calendar. It is commonly referred to by many Witnesses as simply "The Memorial".[citation needed] Jehovah's Witnesses believe that such verses as Luke 22:19-20 and 1 Cor 11:26 constitute a commandment to remember the death of Christ (and not the resurrection, as only the remembrance of the death was observed by early Christians), and they do so on a yearly basis just as Passover is celebrated yearly by the Jews.
Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), as part of their historic testimony against times and seasons, do not celebrate or observe Easter or any other Church holidays, believing instead that "every day is the Lord's day", and that elevation of one day above others suggests that it is acceptable to do un-Christian acts on other days. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Quakers were persecuted for this non-observance of Holy Days.
Some Christian groups feel that Easter is something to be regarded with great joy: not marking the day itself, but remembering and rejoicing in the event it commemorates—the miracle of Christ's resurrection. In this spirit, these Christians teach that each day and all Sabbaths should be kept holy, in Christ's teachings. Hebrew-Christian, Sacred Name, and Armstrong movement churches (such as the Living Church of God) usually reject Easter in favor of Nisan 14 observance and celebration of the Christian Passover. This is especially true of Christian groups that celebrate the New Moons or annual High Sabbaths in addition to seventh-day Sabbath. They support this textually with reference to the letter to the Colossians: "Let no one...pass judgment on you in matters of food and drink or with regard to a festival or new moon or sabbath. These are shadows of things to come; the reality belongs to Christ."
In the early Church
The first Christians, Jewish and Gentile, were certainly aware of the Hebrew calendar (Acts 2:1; 12:3; 20:6; 27:9; 1 Cor 16:8), but there is no direct evidence that they celebrated any specifically Christian annual festivals. Direct evidence for the Easter festival begins to appear in the mid-2nd century. Perhaps the earliest extant primary source referencing Easter is a mid-2nd century Paschal homily attributed to Melito of Sardis, which characterizes the celebration as a well-established one. Evidence for another kind of annual Christian festival, the commemoration of martyrs, begins to appear at about the same time as evidence for the celebration of Easter.
But while martyrs' days (usually the individual dates of martyrdom) were celebrated on fixed dates in the local solar calendar, the date of Easter was fixed by means of the local Jewish lunisolar calendar. This is consistent with the celebration of Easter having entered Christianity during its earliest, Jewish period, but does not leave the question free of doubt.
The ecclesiastical historian Socrates Scholasticus (b. 380) attributes the observance of Easter by the church to the perpetuation of its custom, "just as many other customs have been established," stating that neither Jesus nor his Apostles enjoined the keeping of this or any other festival. Although he describes the details of the Easter celebration as deriving from local custom, he insists the feast itself is universally observed.
