Easter?

So, I got to thinking earlier this week about "Easter". What does the word "Easter" actually mean? This became more interesting to me the more I heard people use "Resurrection Day" in lieu of "Easter". Ok, I'm done with the quotes, that was annoying...So, according to Wikipedia, "the origin of the term Easter comes from the Germanic name for the month in which the Christian feast usually fell, and so, just as the American civic holiday of the Fourth of July has nothing to do with Julius Caesar for whom July was named, neither does Easter have anything to do with the pagan goddess Eostre, the namesake of the month in which Pascha fell. This potential difficulty only exists for speakers of Germanic languages, however. Most languages in the world use a cognate form of the Greek term Pascha and so are free of any pagan connotations for the name of the feast."

So, we use some term for the resurrection of Jesus that has absolutely nothing to do with Him or what He did. Nice. Fortunately in most other languages, the word used for the celebration of Jesus' resurrection is derived from the Hebrew Pesach, meaning Passover, as Jesus is the true Passover lamb. This got me thinking about how many words we use regularly having no idea what they mean or what they are deriven from. It has made me think more intentionally about the words I use.

So, next year I guess I'll be wishing people a Happy Resurrection Day or Happy Pascha...

My next research project: why do we feel the need to bless people after they sneeze...