While English “Easter” might’ve had some relation to a Germanic Eostre goddess, the much more clear relation for Christians would be for “austron” as the word for dawn, and the east, etc. Traditionally all churches faced east as Christian’s was supposed to return from the East like the sunrise:
> Old English Easterdæg, "Easter day," from Eastre (Northumbrian Eostre), from Proto-Germanic austron-, "dawn," also possibly the name of a goddess whose feast was celebrated in Eastermonað (the Anglo-Saxon month corresponding with April), from aust- "east, toward the sunrise" (compare east), from PIE root *aus- (1) "to shine," especially of the dawn.
However it’d be inaccurate to infer that Easter is a pagan holiday or something. Rather the medieval Christian missionaries were very adept at building on concepts and repurposing traditions from cultures to help relate the Gospel.
> Today, the problem of pagan parallels does not concern me at all. Here is why: First, even if parallels do exist between the myths of the gods and the resurrection of Jesus, that does not require us to reduce the resurrection to fiction. Such parallels might be—as [C. S.] Lewis observed decades ago—expressions of innate human longings for atonement and new life.
Assume for the sake of argument that Jesus was the incarnation of the immortal creator of the universe, then it would be natural that said creation would have echoes of this event and people would relate to them
. It’d actually be a bit incoherent to not relate concepts of spring, renewal, sunrise, as very physical aspects of our human being to such a theology.
1: https://worldviewbulletin.substack.com/p/the-resurrection-an...