History of the Holidays: Easter
Read the following text and fill in the gaps with the verb that best fits each space using the correct verb form of the verbs below. There are TWO extra verbs you will not need. The activity begins with an example (0).
Verbs: regard, light, unite, spare, become, ostracise, ensure, dye, observe, exacerbate, think, appear, rise.
Easter: A Festival of Light, Language and Renewal
Easter (0) is widely regarded as the holiest day in the Christian calendar, its significance rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Yet what may strike many as surprising is that this profoundly solemn religious festival has come to be associated with chocolate eggs, rabbits and pastel-coloured springtime decorations. Were one to accept this at face value, one might assume the two things had nothing to do with each other. In fact, the opposite is true: beneath the cheerful exterior lies a history far older, one steeped in ancient mythology, Jewish tradition, and centuries of remarkable cultural exchange.
From Passover to Easter
According to the Gospels of the New Testament, Jesus travelled to Jerusalem with his apostles to celebrate Passover — the Jewish festival commemorating the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Following the Passover meal, he was arrested, tried and crucified on what has since become known as Good Friday. Two days later, however, he is said (1) from the dead, an event that was to become the very foundation of Christian belief.
The earliest Christians — many of whom were of Jewish origin — had initially celebrated the resurrection as part of Passover itself. Indeed, the early name for Easter was Pascha, derived directly from the Hebrew Pesach, meaning Passover, a linguistic connection that survives to this day in most of the world's languages, including French (Pâques), Spanish (Pascua) and Italian (Pasqua).
The word Passover itself is rooted in one of the most dramatic narratives in the Torah, the Book of Exodus. After nine plagues had failed to persuade Pharaoh to release the Israelites from bondage, God decreed a final and devastating judgement: the death of every firstborn in Egypt. Instructed to mark their doorposts with the blood of a sacrificed lamb, the Israelites (2) when the "Destroyer" passed through Egypt that night. The biblical line encapsulating this moment reads: "When I see the blood, I will pass over you" — the very phrase from which William Tyndale coined the English word Passover in his landmark Bible translation of 1530.
Fixing the Date of Easter
In the early centuries of Christianity, Easter was celebrated on different days of the week, giving rise to considerable confusion across the growing Church. It was not until 325 AD that the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great and the Council of Nicaea resolved the matter, ruling that Easter should always be observed on a Sunday — specifically, the first Sunday after the first full moon following the spring equinox. This means Easter can fall anywhere between 22nd March and 25th April, earning it the designation of a "moveable feast," firmly anchored, even so, to the ancient lunar rhythms that had governed religious calendars long before Christianity.
It was around this time that Christians also began lighting the Paschal candle at the Easter Vigil — a large, ornate candle whose flame symbolises the light of Christ emerging from the darkness of the tomb, and which continues (3) at baptisms and funerals throughout the year.
Holy Week: The Final Days of Jesus
The week leading up to Easter is known as Holy Week, and each day carries its own theological significance. It begins with Palm Sunday, commemorating Jesus's entry into Jerusalem, where crowds are said to have spread palm branches before him. Holy Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday recall his teachings in the city — Wednesday being referred to by some traditions as Spy Wednesday, in reference to Judas Iscariot's betrayal. Maundy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper and the washing of the disciples' feet, the word Maundy deriving from the Latin mandatum, meaning "commandment." Good Friday marks the crucifixion and (4) as a day of solemn reflection and fasting, followed by Holy Saturday, a day of quiet waiting representing the time Jesus spent in the tomb.
These final three days — Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday — form the Paschal Triduum, widely regarded as a single, continuous act of worship rather than three separate occasions, and considered by many Christians to be the most sacred period in the entire liturgical year.
Pagan Traditions and the Spring Equinox
Long before Christianity had begun to spread across Europe, the arrival of spring had been celebrated as a sacred threshold — a moment when light and dark held each other in perfect balance and life was stirring once more beneath the earth. Among the Celts, the goddess Ostara — whose symbols, the hare and the egg, were held to represent fertility and new life — was celebrated with hilltop fires. Rather than eliminating these deeply ingrained customs, the early Church chose to adapt them, weaving its own theology into the fabric of existing belief. The timing of Easter was deliberately aligned with the spring equinox; the resurrection narrative was found to echo the pagan themes of death and rebirth already embedded in popular culture. By absorbing these ancient rites, the Church ensured that the new festival would feel both familiar and transformative — a celebration rooted in the eternal human conviction that after every winter, light returns.
The English word Easter (5) to derive from Eostre, a Germanic goddess of the dawn first mentioned by the monk Bede in the eighth century, whose name is linked to the same ancient root as east, aurora and the Latin aurum (gold) — all evoking the golden light of the morning sky.
The Origin of Easter Eggs
Eggs had been revered as symbols of birth and renewal for thousands of years before Christianity. With the rise of Christianity, these associations were reinterpreted: the shell came to represent the sealed tomb of Christ, and the cracking of the egg was seen as mirroring his emergence from death. In many Orthodox traditions, eggs (6) red to symbolise the blood of Christ, a practice dating back to the earliest centuries of the faith.
A rather practical factor also played a crucial role in cementing the egg's place in Easter tradition. During the forty days of Lent, eggs were strictly forbidden, yet hens continued laying regardless. Families would hard-boil them to preserve them, and eating them joyfully on Easter Sunday became both a celebration of the end of fasting and a natural symbol of the opened tomb.
It was not until 1873 that J.S. Fry & Sons produced the first hollow chocolate egg, a development that was to transform the tradition entirely. Cadbury soon followed, and once they had perfected a smoother milk chocolate, the chocolate Easter egg went on (7) one of the most commercially successful traditions in the modern world.
The Easter Bunny and Modern Customs
The hare had long been revered as a symbol of fertility in European folklore, held to be sacred to the goddess Eostre and admired for its remarkable reproductive capacity. Unlike rabbits, hares possess a rare biological ability known as superfetation, meaning they can conceive a second litter while still carrying the first — a seemingly magical quality that (8) wondrous to ancient observers.
From the sixteenth century onwards, German families began telling their children that a magical hare — the Oschter Haws — would bring coloured eggs to well-behaved children. Children built nests to attract the creature, a custom that gradually evolved into the Easter egg hunt and the Easter basket as we know them today. Had German settlers not carried this tradition to the Americas in the eighteenth century, the Easter Bunny might never have taken hold in popular culture. In 1878, President Rutherford B. Hayes opened the White House lawn to children wishing to roll their eggs, giving rise to the famous Easter Egg Roll, a tradition that has continued ever since.
A Festival for Everyone
Rarely does a single celebration manage (9) so many layers of human experience. Easter is simultaneously a Jewish story of liberation, a Christian story of resurrection and a universal story of the return of warmth and light. Whether one chooses to focus on the ancient goddess whose name gave us the word Easter, the Passover narrative at the heart of the Christian story, or simply the sight of daffodils in an English garden, the message remains the same: that life is a cycle, and that after every winter, however harsh, the light of spring will always return. It is, perhaps, this conviction above all others — ancient, universal and endlessly renewed — that (10) Easter's enduring place at the very heart of human experience.
KEY
1. to have risen
2. were spared (were forgiven)
3. to be lit/ being lit
4. is observed
5. is thought
6. were dyed
7. to become
8. would have appeared
9. to unite
10. has ensured
Extra verbs: ostracise, exacerbate
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