What Would You Sacrifice? Click to watch the clip

Happy Easter! Easter is the most important Christian festival because it marks the death of Jesus on Good Friday and his resurrection - which means “coming back to life” - on Easter Sunday.

Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon Unlike Christmas which is always on the same day, Easter moves every year and can be on any date between March 22nd and April 25th. The reasons for this are a bit complicated, so try to keep up: the events of Easter originally happened over the Jewish festival of Passover. Easter is the first Sunday after the first full moon the Spring equinox ©Flickr/Fields of View

A lot of the symbols we associate with Easter date back to the days before Christianity came to Britain when most people partied at the pagan festivals which marked the coming of spring. This was traditionally a time to celebrate fertility, which is all about having babies and growing crops. ©Flickr/freefotouk

Ostara Eostre Easter One of the festivals was held in honour of a fertility goddess called “Ostara” or “Eostre”. As Britain became increasingly Christian, the pagan festival slowly died out but the name remained, although it was eventually pronounced Easter. However, a lot of the pagan symbols also remained, despite the Church’s best efforts to give them a Christian meaning.

©Flickr/MrB-MMX The most obvious example is the egg. It looks dead, like a stone, but then new life bursts out. To the Pagans this symbolised the life of spring emerging from the dead of winter. To Christians it became a symbol of Jesus coming out of the tomb.

This also explains Easter chicks, because they come out of the eggs and are a symbol of new life. ©Flickr/mtsofan

Hot cross buns come from pagan times too Hot cross buns come from pagan times too. Spiced buns or loaves of bread marked with a cross were eaten to honour the goddess Eostre, although it’s not clear why. Some say that the four quarters represented the four seasons, some say that the cross represented the crossed horns of the bull that was sacrificed to Eostre during the festival. For Christians, the cross came to represent the cross on which Jesus was crucified. Traditionally, hot cross buns were only eaten on Good Friday, the day that Jesus died, but nowadays most supermarkets sell them from Christmas onwards. ©Flickr/Akane86

©Flickr/John Donaghy/skambalu The Pagans would often light a fire to celebrate the longer days of spring. The idea was to honour the Sun God and to help banish the darkness. In some churches it is still traditional to light a bonfire or a candle on the night before Easter Day. This event is called the Easter Vigil, and the light of the flames is meant to symbolise Jesus because he is sometimes called “The Light of the World” in the Bible.

©Flickr/a3aanw The Easter Bunny was another symbol of fertility for the Pagans because rabbits breed very quickly and produce lots of baby rabbits in springtime. This is one pagan tradition that Christians really struggled to find a new meaning for, but most think of it as another symbol of new life. The Easter Bunny has gradually become a bit like Father Christmas, bringing eggs or even presents to children on Easter morning.

©Flickr/arbyreed/Lawrence OP But for Christians, the symbol that best sums up the story of Easter is the cross, or the crucifix - which is a cross with a figure of Jesus on it. But even this has non-Christian beginnings. Crucifixion means “to be made like a cross”, and it was a particularly nasty method of execution used by the Romans. Jesus wasn’t the only person to suffer death on a cross. Two other men were crucified at the same time as him, and throughout the Roman Empire, hundreds of thousands of people were crucified to help stamp out opposition and maintain the Emperor’s control. You might wonder, therefore, why Christians chose the cross as their symbol.

©Flickr/sarahgb (theoriginal) In Jesus’ time, Jews would sacrifice a white lamb at the festival of Passover to show that they were willing to give up something valuable to say sorry for what they’d done wrong. Jesus taught that this was not enough. God would have to make a perfect sacrifice to make up for all of humanity’s wrongdoing, and Jesus was willing to be that sacrifice.

In the Bible, Jesus is sometimes called “the Lamb of God” because of this, and the symbol of a white lamb can often be seen in churches. Christians believe that even though Jesus was innocent of any crime he was executed like a criminal. When he was hanging on the cross he took the blame and the punishment for all the things that people do wrong . But that wasn’t the end of the story. Christians also believe that Jesus defeated death and came back to life. ©Flickr/Lawrence OP

©Flickr/freefotouk So not only is the cross a symbol of Jesus’ sacrifice, it is also a symbol of hope for Christians. They believe that when they die they can go to Heaven to be with God because their punishment has already been taken for them by Jesus. That is why Christians call the day he died “Good Friday”. To remember Jesus’ sacrifice, they share bread and wine together just like he asked them to the night before he died. Christians try their best to live good lives and to follow Jesus’ teachings, but they also know that if they fail, they can be forgiven. So the real meaning of Easter for Christians is to remember the sacrifice that Jesus made, and also the sacrifice that God made in allowing him to die, which is summed up by this verse from the Bible.

For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life. John 3:16

Happy Easter!