By Evangelist Peter Gee
Editor-in-Chief, Christianity News Daily
ChristianityNewsDaily.com
04/05/2026
At Christianity News Daily, we do not exist to flatter a dying culture. We exist to tell the truth in the sight of God and before men. And the truth is this: the Western church is in grave danger when it allows the resurrection of Jesus Christ to be pushed to the margins while eggs, bunnies, candy, costumes, and seasonal pageantry take center stage. The issue is not whether a child sees a painted egg. The issue is whether the church has permitted another message, another emphasis, and another affection to stand in front of the risen Christ. When that happens, the matter is no longer a harmless tradition. It becomes spiritual corruption.
The first commandment still stands with terrifying force: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” That word has never been repealed. God has never relaxed His holiness to make room for fashionable religion, commercial religion, or child-friendly idolatry. He did not tolerate it in Israel, and He will not tolerate it in the modern church.
The Bible shows that Israel repeatedly broke the covenant by adopting the gods, images, and rituals of surrounding nations. That pattern is one of the clearest warnings for the church today. Israel did not usually begin by loudly renouncing Yahweh. More often, the nation drifted. It borrowed. It blended. It accommodated. It mixed the holy with the profane. It added what God had not commanded. It imitated the nations. It wanted religion without obedience, worship without holiness, and blessings without covenant fidelity. That is exactly how apostasy works.
The old sin in a modern costume
Many in the West call this season “Easter,” but for countless churches, homes, and public celebrations, the focus is no longer the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. The focus is the egg hunt, the bunny image, the chocolate basket, the pastel spectacle, and the carefully branded family event. In too many places, the church building becomes a stage for seasonal entertainment rather than a sanctuary of truth. Children can explain the bunny, name the candy, describe the hunt, and anticipate the basket, yet they cannot clearly tell you why Christ died, what His resurrection accomplished, or why sinners must repent and believe the gospel.
That should alarm every shepherd, every parent, every Sunday school teacher, and every believer who still trembles at the Word of God.
Historically, eggs in springtime carried meanings of life and renewal in many ancient cultures, and decorated eggs also became part of Christian practice in various regions, especially as a sign of the end of Lenten fasting and, in some traditions, as a symbol of Christ’s tomb and resurrection. The Easter Hare or Easter Bunny, however, appears much later in German folklore, with references from the 16th and 17th centuries, and the custom was carried to North America by German immigrants in the 1700s. Scholars also caution that popular claims linking the bunny to an ancient pagan goddess are often overstated or poorly supported. In other words, the history is mixed and layered, not simple. But the church’s real danger does not depend on proving every internet myth. The danger is plain enough: when folk custom, commercial symbolism, and child-centered spectacle overshadow Jesus Christ, those things become functional rivals to Him.
That is the burden of this warning.
How Israel betrayed God
Israel’s betrayal of God followed a repeated pattern that Scripture displays with devastating clarity. God redeemed them, gave them His covenant, spoke His law, revealed His holiness, and commanded exclusive worship. Yet they continually turned aside.
At Sinai, while Moses was on the mountain receiving the law, the people fashioned a golden calf and declared, “This is your god, O Israel, that brought you out of the land of Egypt!” That was not mere bad taste. It was covenant treason. Later, in the land, they repeatedly went after Baal and Asherah, adopting the practices of the Canaanites. During the period of the Judges, the cycle repeated again and again: sin, oppression, crying out, deliverance, then renewed apostasy. The prophets then rose to confront a people who still kept religious language but had given their hearts to idols, high places, images, and alliances with pagan culture. Eventually, judgment fell in the form of national humiliation, invasion, famine, plague, exile, and destruction. Scripture presents that history as a warning, not a museum exhibit.
The church in the West should read that history on its knees.
Two chilling similarities between Israel and the Western church
1. Israel adopted the symbols and practices of surrounding nations, and the Western church has adopted the symbols and habits of a secularized culture.
Israel was forbidden to learn the ways of the nations, yet she kept doing exactly that. She borrowed the gods, the rites, the imagery, and even the moral corruption of the peoples around her. She wanted to belong to God while also looking like the nations.
The Western church has done something frighteningly similar. It may still mention Jesus, but in many places it packages the season around symbols that the surrounding culture can enjoy without repentance, without the cross, without holiness, and without new birth. The resurrection becomes background. The spectacle becomes foreground. A season meant to proclaim the triumph of Christ over death becomes a marketplace of rabbits, eggs, candy, brunches, costume characters, and family amusements. The world is comfortable with that version because it demands nothing. It offends no sin. It exposes no rebellion. It preaches no judgment. It requires no cross.
That is what compromise looks like in respectable clothing.
2. Israel replaced covenant obedience with convenience, and the Western church has replaced apostolic Christianity with attractional religion
Jeroboam set up golden calves in Bethel and Dan so the people would not go to Jerusalem. It was a religious arrangement built on convenience, political calculation, and altered worship. It kept the people religious while severing them from God’s appointed order.
That same spirit is alive today. In much of the West, churches shape the resurrection season around what is marketable, comfortable, and popular. The thinking is clear: keep it light, keep it festive, keep it child-friendly, keep it crowded, keep it social-media-ready, and, above all, do not make it too solemn, too doctrinal, too bloody, too holy, or too confrontational. So the old Church of Pentecost—with its doctrine, repentance, prayer, holiness, power, and Christ-centered proclamation—is replaced by seasonal programming. That is not renewal. That is substitution.
And God sees substitutions.
The cycle of apostasy then and now
The Old Testament repeatedly shows a cycle: blessing, drift, compromise, idolatry, warning, judgment, distress, and then, if God grants mercy, repentance and restoration. Israel often did not plunge into judgment in one day. The fall began with misplaced affections and tolerated mixtures.
The same cycle can be seen in the West.
First, Christ ceases to be central in the affections of the people.
Then the doctrine weakens.
Then Scripture is treated lightly.
Then symbolism becomes detached from truth.
Then entertainment enters the sanctuary.
Then commerce dominates the season.
Then, children are discipled more by culture than by the Word.
Then a generation rises that knows the symbols but not the Savior.
Then judgment is already at the door.
That is why mockery of God is never a small matter.
The actual history of Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny
It is important to be accurate. Not every claim commonly repeated online is sound. The history is more complicated than simple slogans.
Eggs have long been associated with spring, new life, and seasonal festivals in a range of cultures. The Library of Congress notes that decorated eggs have ancient roots beyond Christianity, including Persian and Eurasian spring traditions. At the same time, Christians also developed explicitly Christian uses for eggs. In some traditions, eggs were forbidden during Lent and then eaten at Easter, making them a natural festive food at the end of the fasting period. Red-dyed eggs in Eastern Christianity came to symbolize the blood of Christ, and the egg itself could symbolize the sealed tomb and the emergence of new life. So it is not historically accurate to say every Easter egg custom is purely pagan or atheist in origin; some egg customs were consciously Christianized and used devotionally.
The bunny-or-hare tradition is different. The Easter Hare appears in German-speaking regions, with references from the late 1500s and 1600s describing children searching for eggs said to have been laid or delivered by the hare. This custom later traveled to America with German immigrants, especially in Pennsylvania, and evolved into the modern Easter Bunny tradition. The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian both trace the bunny tradition to German folklore rather than to a clearly documented ancient Christian practice.
What about claims that the bunny came directly from the goddess Eostre or Ostara? The answer is that the evidence is uncertain and often exaggerated. Britannica notes that the very word “Easter” may be linked, according to one old theory from Bede, to Eostre, but the connection is not settled beyond dispute. The Library of Congress specifically warns that many modern claims about the Easter Bunny and a pagan goddess go far beyond the evidence. In short, some people make the pagan-origin argument too simplistically, while others dismiss every concern too quickly. The careful historical conclusion is this: Easter customs in the West are a mixture of Christian observance, regional folklore, spring symbolism, and later commercial development.
But here is the theological point that history cannot erase: even if a custom entered Christian lands through folk practice rather than direct pagan worship, it still becomes spiritually dangerous the moment it competes with Christ, eclipses Christ, or catechizes children more effectively than the gospel does.
That is where Satan works best—not always by open denial, but by displacement.
How Satan lures a culture away from Christ
Satan does not need every family to bow before a carved statue in order to advance idolatry. He only needs Christ displaced. He only needs truth diluted. He only needs the holy things of God buried under sentiment, nostalgia, commerce, sugar, and spectacle.
He seduces a civilization by altering emphasis.
He does not mind religious language so long as the cross is emptied of offense. He does not mind church attendance so long as repentance disappears. He does not mind seasonal enthusiasm so long as Christ is no longer the blazing center. He does not mind family events so long as parents mistake festivity for discipleship. He does not mind children smiling in church halls so long as they leave knowing the bunny better than the risen Lord.
This is why the matter is so serious. Idolatry is not only bowing to a statue. Idolatry is giving the heart, the attention, the delight, the imagination, or the center of devotion to something that belongs to God alone.
The first commandment still thunders
Listen again to the law of God:
“You shall have no other gods before Me.”
Exodus 20:3, NKJV
And again:
“You shall not make for yourself a carved image—any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God…”
Exodus 20:4–5, NKJV
God is jealous for His own glory. Men dislike that word because they imagine God to be like themselves. But God’s jealousy is holy, righteous, and perfect. He alone is God. He alone created all things. He alone redeemed through the blood of His Son. He alone deserves worship.
The prophets cried against Israel because she provoked this holy jealousy. Consider the sobering words:
“They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods;
With abominations, they provoked Him to anger.”
Deuteronomy 32:16, NKJV
And again:
“My people have committed two evils:
They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters,
And hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water.”
Jeremiah 2:13, NKJV
That is the essence of all compromise. Men forsake the fountain and embrace broken cisterns. They abandon the living Christ and cling to substitutes.
God’s judgments in Israel are not myths but warnings.
God’s punishments upon Israel were not light. After the golden calf incident, thousands died. At Baal-Peor, a plague struck the people. In the wilderness, the unbelieving generation fell. In Judges, God gave His people into the hands of oppressors repeatedly. Later came drought, defeat, prophetic denunciation, the Assyrian destruction of the northern kingdom in 722 BC, the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in 586 BC, and exile. These were not random tragedies. Scripture interprets them as covenant judgments connected to persistent rebellion and idolatry.
The Western church should not read those accounts as if God has changed His mind about holiness.
The church of Pentecost versus the church of performance
The church born at Pentecost was not built on seasonal gimmicks. It was built on the exaltation of the risen Christ, the preaching of repentance, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, steadfast devotion to apostolic doctrine, prayer, fellowship, holiness, and bold witness. The apostles did not gather crowds with rabbits and painted eggs. They proclaimed that Jesus Christ, whom men crucified, God had raised from the dead. They called sinners to repent. They warned of judgment. They preached remission of sins in His name.
That is the pattern the Western church has abandoned in many quarters.
A church can retain a calendar and lose its power. It can keep a holiday and lose the Lord of the holiday. It can preserve the shell and lose the substance. It can talk about family values while neglecting the gospel truth. It can become so accustomed to cultural Christianity that it no longer notices that the surrounding world has baptized its symbols while rejecting its Savior.
This is not progress. It is decay.
What many children are being taught instead
In many churches and homes across America and Europe, children are introduced to Easter chiefly through baskets, bunnies, eggs, games, candy, and pageantry. Public culture reinforces those symbols with relentless commercial energy, while the biblical meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection is often treated as secondary or assumed rather than carefully taught. Historically, the Easter Bunny became a popular children’s holiday figure in America through German-American custom and later mass culture; by the 19th and 20th centuries, it had become deeply embedded in commercial celebration.
The result is predictable. Children become fluent in the folklore and illiterate in the gospel unless parents and churches deliberately correct it.
And let this be said plainly: it is not enough to mention Jesus briefly after an egg hunt. Christ is not a footnote to the season. He is the whole meaning of it. He is not an accessory. He is the center. He is not one symbol among many. He is Lord.
God will not be mocked.
The apostle Paul wrote:
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”
Galatians 6:7, NKJV
That warning belongs to our age. A church that sows compromise will reap weakness. A church that sows entertainment will reap superficiality. A church that sows symbolism without truth will reap confusion. A church that trains children in festivity without repentance will reap a generation that has Christian memory but not Christian conviction.
And when judgment comes, many will say they never meant any harm. But Nadab and Abihu did not survive unauthorized fire. Uzzah did not survive the irreverent handling of holy things. Israel did not escape because it felt sincere. Good intentions do not sanctify disobedience.
The remedy is repentance, not rebranding.
The answer is not a “more balanced Easter program.” The answer is repentance.
Let the church cast down every rival emphasis. Let pastors preach Christ crucified and risen with tears and boldness. Let parents teach their children that the empty tomb matters more than every basket in the world. Let Sunday schools open the Scriptures instead of centering the season on childish novelties. Let churches refuse to hand the calendar over to merchants and marketers. Let the resurrection be preached not as a sentimental spring theme but as the decisive victory of the Son of God over sin, death, hell, and Satan.
Hear the Word of God:
“Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.”
1 John 5:21, NKJV
And again:
“Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.”
1 Corinthians 10:14, NKJV
And again:
“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness…”
Matthew 6:33, NKJV
The issue is not whether every family tradition is equally evil. The issue is whether anything has taken first place over Christ. If it has, it must go.
A final warning to the West
Western Christianity stands in a dangerous hour. A civilization that once heard the gospel clearly now buries it under commerce, sentiment, and symbolic clutter. Churches that should thunder with resurrection truth have, in many places, become managers of seasonal atmosphere. The altar has been crowded. The message has been softened. The holy has been trivialized.
But Jesus Christ is risen. He is not a mascot. He is not a seasonal logo. He is not a decorative theme for spring. He is the crucified and risen King, the Judge of all the earth, the Savior of all who repent and believe, and the One before whom every knee shall bow.
Let the Western church hear this warning before it is too late: the God who judged Israel for covenant betrayal still sees, still speaks, and still hates idolatry. He will not share His glory with another. He will not smile upon a church that enthrones substitutes. He will not bless the mixture forever.
So cast down the idols. Remove the rivals. Teach the children the gospel. Preach the resurrection. Restore the fear of God. Return to the way of the Church of Pentecost. Return to Christ.
Because eggs crack. Candy melts. Folklore fades. But Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
And He alone is worthy.
