Easter is a deeply religious holiday for Christians that falls in the spring. The holiday celebrates the day Jesus rose from the dead, three days after the Crucifixion. Like many other religious holidays (looking at you, Christmas), Easter has become a highly commercial event often catered toward young children. It features chocolate rabbits, decorated Easter baskets, colorfully dyed eggs, and, of course, the Easter Bunny, dropping off baskets of gifts and treats in the middle of the night to delight children everywhere on Easter Sunday morning. But how did all these Easter traditions become such a large part of the celebration?
Here's what to know about the most popular Easter traditions today.
This year, Easter falls on Sunday, April 20, 2025—almost a full month later than did last year (Sunday, March 31, 2024). The holiday is a "movable feast," meaning the date changes every year. The date is based on the lunar cycle: Easter occurs on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. It's a little confusing, but this year, the equinox is on March 20, and the first full moon after that is on Sunday, April 13, so Easter is celebrated the week after that.
P.S. If you're planning for next year, it'll be a little earlier—Easter will be April 5, 2026.
There are a few theories, though no one is entirely sure.
Some claim that the word Easter derives from Eostre, an Anglo-Saxon pagan goddess of spring and fertility. According to folklore, Eostre found a bird dying from the cold and turned it into a rabbit so its fur would keep it warm—but that rabbit still laid eggs like a bird. "In one version [of the story], the bunny paints and decorates the eggs as a gift to Eostre to show his loyalty and love," says Brandi Auset, the author of The Goddess Guide.
Other sources debunk this claim, saying it's more likely the word Easter comes from the Old High German word Eostarum, which came from the Latin term for Easter week: in albis, loosely meaning "dawn." In many other languages, like French, the word for Easter directly comes from the word for Passover, the Jewish holiday that falls around the same time.
Lent is a 40-day period when many Christians engage in preparation for the celebration of Easter through fasting, prayer, and acts of charity. These sacrifices and good deeds are meant to show penance for sins they've committed.
While early Christians generally had strict fasting rules during Lent, modern Christians tend to choose something to give up—like alcohol or social media—and avoid eating meat on Fridays during Lent.
Lent traditionally starts on Ash Wednesday (March 5 in 2025) and, depending on the Christian denomination, ends on Maundy Thursday (the Thursday before Easter) or Holy Saturday (a.k.a. Easter Eve).
You can likely thank that pagan story about the spring goddess Eostre for Easter's furry, more nondenominational mascot. When Eostre turned a dying bird into a rabbit that lays eggs, she pretty much set the stage for the Easter Bunny going hippity-hoppity down the bunny trail with eggs and other treats for kids.
Symbolically, eggs have been seen to represent new life—relating both to spring and the Resurrection. Dyeing Easter eggs may have a deep religious connection. One theory regarding Easter eggs involves Mary Magdalene, the first person to see Jesus after the Resurrection. As the story goes, she was holding a plain egg in the presence of an emperor and proclaiming the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The emperor said that Jesus's rising from the dead was as likely as that egg turning red—and the egg turned bright red while he was still speaking.
In addition, during Lent, Christians begin preparing for the holiday by praying, meditating, and making personal sacrifices. "Christians [have historically] prepared themselves by forgoing ordinary dietary items, such as meat, eggs, and milk," says Anne Kathryn Killinger, the author of An Inner Journey to Easter. "For many years, Easter was known in Western Europe as Egg Sunday, for eating eggs on that day was one of its joys." Those eggs were often presented in baskets lined with colored straw to resemble a bird's nest—thanks again, perhaps, to Eostre.
The practice may go back to 16th-century Germany; the Protestant reformer Martin Luther is said to have organized hunts for his congregation, with men hiding eggs for women and children to find. The exact history is murky, but today Easter egg hunts, whether at home, with friends and neighbors, at local parks, or at churches, are one of the most fun Easter traditions for kids to participate in. "For Christians, this is a serious holy day, dealing with issues of life and death," says Robin Knowles Wallace, the author of The Christian Year: A Guide for Worship and Preaching. "Because of the difficulty of sharing these big issues in age-appropriate ways, sometimes we divert to the more lighthearted symbols of eggs and rabbits, hence the proliferation of Easter egg hunts at churches."
"The tradition of chocolate eggs began in 19th-century France and Germany, and soon spread to the rest of Europe and eventually the United States," says Katherine Tegen, the author of The Story of the Easter Bunny. "To receive the special Easter eggs, children were told to make nests from hats or baskets so the Easter Bunny could leave them there." Killinger says that many Christians are also eager to eat chocolate on Easter because it's a common modern-day sacrifice during Lent.
Another typical Easter food is lamb. This may be because Jesus is referred to as "the lamb of God" in the Scriptures, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, and because lamb has a long history as a sacrificial animal in ancient Israel.
The Easter lilies (Lilium longiflorum) adorning so many houses and churches this time of year are actually native to Japan and weren't introduced to the United States until the 19th century. Still, the Bible makes many references to lilies, and they've long been associated with purity and rebirth, connecting them to the idea of Jesus and the Resurrection.
The marshmallow candy, heavily marketed around Easter, has been around for over 70 years. It's made by Just Born (the same company that makes Mike & Ike's), which was founded in the early 20th century by Sam Born, a Russian Jewish immigrant. In the 1950s, his company acquired Rodda Candy Company, which invented Peeps; at the time, workers were making them by hand, and a single one could take 27 hours to create. Just Born streamlined the process to make them widely commercially available. They're sold year-round, and aren't just for Easter—there are now Halloween, Christmas, and Valentine's Day versions too.