Medieval Easter Traditions

Easter is a holiday alive and well in today’s world. It was equally as important if not more so for the medieval European. How do today’s traditions relate to medieval Europe’s view of Easter? In this post, we look at Easter traditions and their medieval connections.

Easter’s Name and Date

In English, Easter is called exactly that. Easter. This word stems from German’s influence on the English language. In both German and Old English, the etymology of the word stems from a Celtic goddess called Eostre. According to Saint Bede, this goddess gave her name to a month that corresponds to April. It was known as Ēastermōnaþ or Eastermonath in West Saxon. The connection continued through to the name of the holiday itself. For a very long time, Bede was the only known source of this stated connection. In fact, it wasn’t until 1958, over 1000 years later, that historians found another source that confirmed this connection. Eostre’s name is also a cognate with the pagan holiday of Ostara. Regardless, this Celtic goddess of Eostre is where the Germans and the English get the name of Easter.

In many other languages, the name for the Easter holiday is Pascha, or some form of that word. This is especially true in any Romance language such as Portuguese (Pascoa), Italian (Pasqua), and French (Paques). The Latin and earlier Greek version of this word referred to the Jewish holiday of Passover. Passover is a lunisolar holiday, meaning it is variable depending on the phases of the moon. Easter is no different in that regard.

For Western Christians, Easter is the first Sunday after the full moon after March 21^st. Yes, that sounds rather complicated. It can be even more complicated when you realize that Eastern Christianity doesn’t follow the same calendar as the West and therefore has a different date for Easter as well. This variability caused controversy through history, especially in the 300s. There is still debate about when this holiday should be.

Easter Eggs

Easter eggs are a large part of current festivities. Eggs in medieval Europe were also very important at Easter. Beginning with Ash Wednesday, the church prohibited medieval Christians from eating eggs during Lent. They could only begin eating them again on Easter. They also couldn’t eat eggs during any other fasting days during the year so Lent wasn’t special for that.

However, it is good to point out that medieval people were unlikely to have had access to fresh eggs up to just before Easter anyway. Chickens have a tendency of pausing egg laying during winter. Some people have argued that eggs were boiled to keep them through Lent. While people were unlikely to have fresh eggs at the beginning of Lent, this tradition may have been possible towards the very end of Lent when egg laying may have started back up and the restrictions were still in place.

There are also non/pre-Christian associations with eggs and spring. For many cultures, eggs represented fertility and new life. These cultures had their own traditions that were later incorporated into Christian traditions for Easter. The Ukrainian tradition of Pysanky is a great example. This tradition involves wax resist decorating on raw eggs. The designs would be painted on with wax, and then the egg would be dyed. Going from light colors to dark, more wax designs would be added with each additional layer of color. At the end, the wax would be melted off, revealing the design.

Decorating eggs was a tradition that existed in pre-Christian Slavic cultures. However, Pysanky eggs are now associated with Ukrainians at Easter. They feature a wide range of designs and colors.