Easter can fall any time between March 25th and April 25th. The date follows a specific formula: it’s always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. The fact that the holiday’s date is influenced by the sun, the moon, and the season, is because of Easter’s roots in paganism.

Religious practices, particularly those of Christianity, tend to be designed in specific ways for purposes of assimilation. It’s a lot easier to convert pagans to Christianity if the major holidays fall around the same time, right?

Easter takes its name from Eostre (also called Ostara), a pagan goddess from Anglo-Saxon England who was described in The Reckoning of Time by Bede, an eighth-century English monk. She was associated with the vernal (spring) equinox, renewal, rebirth, and fertility. Eostre is typically depicted surrounded by hares or rabbits.

In his 1682 work De Ovis Paschalibus [“About the Easter Egg”], German physician Georg Franck von Franckenau discusses the existence of the Easter Bunny and Easter eggs. He states the following in the English translation of his work:

“In Alsace [a region of France bordering Germany], and neighboring regions, these eggs are called rabbit eggs because of the myth told to fool simple people and children that the Easter Bunny is going around laying eggs and hiding them in the herb gardens. So the children look for them, even more enthusiastically, to the delight of smiling adults.”

In other countries, Easter is called Pascha, a name derived from the Jewish holiday Passover (hence why the Latin title of von Franckenau’s work includes the word “paschalibus”]. Even in the US, you may hear the term “Paschal”, used in contexts such as “the Paschal season”. In Germany, Easter is called Ostara, which is also what it’s called by modern pagans and Wiccans.