| The festival of Easter is shrouded in various legends and myths. One legend says that the word "Easter" comes from Eostre, the Anglo-Saxon goddess of spring, to whom the month of April was dedicated. The festival of Eostre was celebrated at the vernal equinox, when the day and night gets an equal share of the day. Another explanation is that Easter derives from an Old German root, Ostern, which stands for dawn or east, the time and place of the rising sun. However most other languages have borrowed the Greek term used by the early Christians: pascha, from the Hebrew pesach (Passover). | |