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Re: How do you keep Easter?
Actually, there was a reason the translators chose the term 'Easter' at that paricular place, but that's another discussion.
Anyways, apparently OPs generally don't keep any holy days except Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and I guess New Year's (when they do communion?)????
Strange. I thought since most everyone here does Christmas, they would do Easter as well?
The reason I posted the question is because we are currently working on putting together next year's Passover celebration. I have been doing a lot of study lately on the history of Passover among Christians, and quite honestly have been amazed at what I have found. I have known for years that the early Christians kept Passover, but I did not have much of a clue as to how the actual development and 'evolution' of Passover-keeping throughout the last two millenia. It's been a FASCINATING study.
For example, I always thought of Easter as coming from Ishtar, but I discovered something. First of all, only English speakers use the term Easter, all Christians everywhere else use some variation of Passover. Thus, you have Pascua, Pascha, etc etc. in different countries.
I learned that 'Easter' may have in fact been derived from the name of the month in which Passover was kept, that is 'Eostermonath', which corresponded to our April. It was originally named by the pre-christian pagan Anglo-Saxons in honour of some goddes named Oestre. The Anglo-Saxons had become Christians, but kept the name of the month (just as they kept the names of the days of the weeks, like Thors-day, Frey's-day, Woden's-day, etc etc). Also, the name Oestre apparently basically means 'rising' in Anglo-Saxon, and had to do with where the sun rose - ie the EAST'. Since it had to do with the 'rising', and since Passover was the time when Christ died and rose, the name Easter was the preferred Anglo-Saxon name. Apparently Ishtar had little to do with it, although I DO notice a clear similarity in name.... still looking into that one.
Anyway, I had known about the Quarterdeciman controversy, and our family has always been Quartodecimans since we discovered all this stuff many many years ago. What I had NOT known was all the history of the actual controversy, and how it was resolved.
In other words, I have come around to realising that 'Easter' per se is not a blatantly pagan celebration, but is the continued celebration of Passover (although on the wrong date!).
The whole egss and bunnies thing however is pure nonsense and has nothing to do with it. THAT part is definitely pagan inspired.
I have found that there is a wealth of really interesting traditions around Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday that, if you get away from the modernised American Protestant junk and start getting back into the original meanings of things, you find that there is a thread, a sliver of truth going all the way back to the original apostolic times and the issues they faced then (especially in their dealings with 'those of the circumcision' who were not believers).
Now, certainly there have crept in a LOT - and i mean a L O T - of unnecessary and unbiblical traditions surrounding the Christian keeping of Pascha, but there are also a lot of really neat and old connections with the ancient past to be had as well.
One of the biggest problems we have today is our disconnect with our past, our heritage, the so called 'generation gap'. Children grow up and do not feel as they are a continuing part of something much larger than themselves. This is sad and ought to be corrected. The right use of good traditions can help to do that. There is something special in knowing that when you participate in something, you are keeping alive a practice and a faith that goes back 2 or 3 thousand years, back to the times of the earliest Christians, to the times of Jesus, to the times of David and the prophets, even back to the times of Abraham.
We today are simply the latest in a long line of Friends of God, the latest and most current crop of God's Household. We are not isolated, alone, floundering in a great world like insignificant specks of flotsam on an ocean of indifference.
We belong.
We belong to something. We're a part of something older than anything else out there.
We ought to instill that knowledge in our children. And it requires more than merely saying it. Somethings require doing, not just talking.
Anyway, just thought I'd share.
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Not if I can get some Zoloft. 
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