EASTER

--Council of Nicaea

--It's Error: Pointing to Sunday Sacredness

--Quartodeciman Dispute (Easter Controversy)

--Anti-Semetic Roots of Easter

--387 & 465

--Pope Gregory's Role

--Astarte/Eostre

--Eostre & the Rabbit

--The Easter Egg

--Color Black for Good Friday

Council of Nicaea

"The Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. decreed that Easter should be
observed on the first Sunday following the first full moon after the spring equinox (March 21). Easter, therefore, can fall on any Sunday between March 22 and April 25."
Britannica

It's Error: Pointing to Sunday Sacredness

"But these same Protestants observe the first day of every week in commemoration of this same event. 

In this they contradict themselves with reference to Easter; and in the observance of Easter they contradict themselves with reference to Sunday.
Of course, being a yearly day, it could not come every year on Sunday; yet lo, by theological sleight-of-hand it is made to coincide every year with that day of the week! 

Equally marvelous with this is the fact that it does not have to occur each year in the same month.
Sometimes is happens in March, sometimes in April, according as the moon may have fulled before or after the sun “crossed the line.” But whether in one month or the other, it is celebrated as the day of the resurrection of Christ.
*Had this celebration been fixed on a certain date, as Christmas is, the religious world would have found itself celebrating, very often, some other day of the week than Sunday in commemoration of the resurrection.

And this is the way it should be, 

if any attempt is to be made to celebrate the day at all. 

But this would be a contradiction of Sunday observance which even the most accomplished theologian would not be able to explain. Consequently it was decreed that the date must coincide with Sunday, and the month and day of the month were left to adjust themselves to a day of the week.

The reader will not fail to note that it was sun-worship, and that alone, that fixed the time of the Easter festival, and that in this concession to heathenism there was a long step taken toward the exaltation of “the venerable day of the sun,”—the weekly sun-festival, Sunday."

E.G.W./E.J. Waggoner

Quartodeciman Dispute (Easter Controversy)

Controversy in the 1st & 2nd century of the Christian Church over what day Passover-hence "Easter" (called Pascha) should fall on. 

In the east it was held for many years longer than in the west on 14 Nissan. Which means it could fall on any day of the week each year. But in the west, under the influence of the Bishop of Rome (Pope), it gradually became associated with the 1st day of the week, Sunday.
Bisshop Sixtus I of Rome began to keep it on Sunday (Pope from 115 AD-125AD). 

"Quartodectimanism, prevalent in Asia Minor and Syria in the second century, emphasized the death of Christ, the true
Paschal victim, while Roman practice emphasized the observance of Sunday as the day of the Resurrection ..."

Catholic Encyclopedia

Irenaeus tells us that Polycarp, a disciple of John, was a quartodeciman. (Prefered 14 Nisan). Anicetus replaced Sixtus on the Papal throne in 155AD. 

Here is what Irenaeus says happened when the two met to discuss the situation:

"Anicetus could not persuade Polycarp to forgo the [Quartodeciman] observance inasmuch as these things had been always observed by John the disciple of the Lord, and by other apostles with whom he had been conversant; nor did Polycarp persuade Anicetus to keep it: Anicetus said that he must hold to the way of the elders before him."

In the 190's AD, Pope Victor I was on the Papal throne in Rome. 

*He tried to enforce Sunday as "Easter" instead of 14 Nisan and

went as far as to try to excommunicate those bishops who resisted. But he was strongly rebuked by some of the other bishops and the policy was reversed. (Note-the Bishop of Rome, at an early date, trying to enforce "Sunday" as a special day on others-but his time was not yet). 

Years later in the east, John Chrysostom harassed those who kept 14 Nisan. 

*Also, the Celtic Church, which resisted becoming part of the Catholic Church well into the early Middle Ages, were said to be quartodecimans by Wilfrid, bishop of York in England.
“For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus the same night in which He was betrayed [not Easter Sunday] took bread” (1 Corinthians 11:23). 

Keep in mind Jesus Christ was betrayed during the night of Nisan 14 (Luke 22:15-22), which was the day of Passover (Exodus 12:6-13)." From Passover to Easter

Anti-Semetic Roots of Easter

"To ensure that Easter would not be celebrated at the same time of the Jewish Passover, the council of Nicea (A. D. 325) decreed that if the Jewish Passover fell on a Sunday, then Easter was to be celebrated the following Sunday in order to have "nothing in common with the detestable Jewish crowd"......In the 4th Century, Constantine, the emperor of the Roman Empire, becomes a Christian, and the Christians gain power. The intra-Jewish fight between two religions becomes something dramatically different when Christianity is in charge.
After Constantine's conversion, for example, the death penalty was imposed on Jews who married Christians." 

ChicagoTribune

387& 465
"In 387, for example, the dates of Easter in France and Egypt were 35 days apart. About 465, the church adopted a system of calculation proposed by the astronomer Victorinus, who had been commissioned by Pope Hilarius to reform the calendar and fix the date of Easter. Elements of his method are still in use, although the Scythian monk Dionysius Exiguus made significant adjustments to the Easter cycle in the 6th century."

Traditional Myths

Pope Gregory's Role

"In AD 595, 40 Roman monks were sent by Pope Gregory

to England with the assignment of converting the Anglo Saxons to
Christianity......led by a Benedictine called Augustine, prior of St Andrew’s monastery in Rome (and later the first Archbishop of Canterbury).
Under the Pope’s instructions, the 40 missionaries convinced the pagan Britons to integrate their ancient celebrations with Christian festivities, where both festival calendars coincided.
But knowing that the pagans were unlikely to simply drop their beliefs and embrace Jesus overnight, he instead gave a blueprint for conversion through coercion.

Pope Gregory instructed his missionaries to embrace, 

rather than reject, local pagan customs in order to make Christianity more palatable for the potential converts.

Over time, Christian symbols and messages were worked into these long-standing traditions, a form of syncretism. 

Christianity became ubiquitous, and knowingly or not, the pagans slowly became Christians. Similar to Christmas and Halloween,
Christians attempted to blend elements of pagan religion with Christian tradition, in order to make the message of Christianity more palpable to those of other religions."
Catholic365

Astarte/Eostre

"The name Easter

is derived from the heathen goddess Eostre, towhom our forefathers, 

and those of other Northern nations, sacrificed in the month of April.
This season of the year has always been signalized by a festival among all the peoples of the earth, in all ages.
The Persians, Egyptians, Chaldeans were all sun worshipers, and in April celebrated the entrance of the sun into that division of the Zodiac known as Aries, and sacred to the Eastern goddess Astarte.

Bede in his 8th-century work The Reckoning of Time, where Bede states that during Ēosturmōnaþ (the equivalent of April), pagan Anglo-Saxons had held feasts in Eostre's honor, but that this tradition had died out by his time, replaced by the Christian Paschal month, a celebration of the resurrection of Jesus.
By way of linguistic reconstruction, the matter of a goddess called Austrō in the Proto-Germanic language has been examined in detail since the foundation of Germanic philology in the 19th century by scholar Jacob Grimm and others. As the Germanic languages descend from Proto-Indo-European (PIE), historical linguists have traced the name to a Proto-Indo-European goddess of the dawn *H₂ewsṓs (→ *Ausṓs),...*aus-, meaning 'to shine' (modern English east also derives from this root)."

Echo/wiki

Eostre & the Rabbit

"Feeling guilty about arriving late one spring, the Goddess Ostara saved the life of a poor bird whose wings had been frozen by the snow. 

She made him her pet or, as some versions have it, her lover. 

Filled with compassion for him since he could no longer fly (in some versions, it was because she wished to amuse a group of young children), Ostara turned him into a snow hare and gave him the gift

of being able to run with incredible speed so he could protect himself from hunters.
In remembrance of his earlier form as a bird, she also gave him the ability to lay eggs (in all the colors of the rainbow, no less), but only on one day out of each year.
--Eventually the hare managed to anger the goddess Ostara, and she cast him into the skies where he would remain as the constellation Lepus (The Hare) forever positioned under the feet of the constellation Orion (the Hunter). 

--He was allowed to return to earth once each year, but only to give away his eggs to the children attending the Ostara festivals that were held each spring. The tradition of the Easter Bunny had begun." 

Easter: History & Traditions

The Easter Egg

"A popular legend tells the story of Eostre entertaining a group of

children. As part of the demonstration, she transformed her pet bird into a pet rabbit. To the astonishment of the audience, this rabbit could still lay eggs like a bird. And thus, rabbits and eggs become inexorably tied to the Easter tradition.
Thus, what began as a celebration of a Germanic goddess with an egg-laying rabbit transformed into the holiday we know as Easter today."
Catholic365

Color Black for Good Friday

"In an ironic twist, the Cybele cult flourished on today's Vatican

Hill. ....This spring festival began as a day of blood on Black Friday, rising to a crescendo after three days, in rejoicing over the resurrection. 

There was violent conflict on Vatican Hill in the early days of Christianity between the Jesus worshippers and pagans who quarrelled over whose God was the true, and whose the imitation."
TheGuardian
"The changing colors of the sanctuary from the purple of Lent to the black of Good Friday provide graphic visual symbols for the Lenten journey..."
CelebratingHolidays