Thus, in asserting that Rome’s authority alone has established the Sunday in preference to the Sabbath, the Catholic Christian Instructed, an authorized Catholic Catechism, says:
Therefore those who pretend to be so religious observers of the Sunday, while they take no notice of other festivals ordained by the same church authority; show that they act by humor, and not by reason and religion; since Sundays and holy days all stand upon the same foundation, viz., the ordinance of the Church.
Every year there is more attention paid to these other festivals, and the Easter festival, specially,has become a high day among Protestants.
Of the name itself and the origin of the festival a London daily paper—the Echo—very truly observed the other day:
The name Easter is derived from the heathen goddess Eostre, to 
whom our forefathers, and those of other Northern nations, sacrificed in the month of April.
This season of the year has always been signalized by a festival among all the peoples of the earth, in all ages.
The Persians, Egyptians, Chaldeans were all sun worshipers, and in April celebrated the entrance of the sun into that division of the Zodiac known as Aries, and sacred to the Eastern goddess Astarte.
---It is not the continuation of the Jewish Passover, and has no manner of connection with that feast. In Acts 12:4, (....intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people. KJV) the translators of our common version have given us the word Easter instead of Passover, but it is correctly rendered in the Revised Version.
---The word Easter is not found in the Bible.
The controversy concerning this festival was on this wise. 
---Now the Roman church was mostly composed of pagans,and heathen influences surrounded it.
Consequently it had no care to conciliate the Jews. But found it expedient to lean towards paganism; and the pagans had a festival which they celebrated in honor of the return of spring, about the time of the vernal equinox. This was adopted by the church of Rome and the churches which it influenced.
The Bishop of Rome commanded the Eastern churches to celebrate their spring festival at the same time that he did. They refused. But Jewish influence could not prevail against the great body of pagans, and at the Council of Nice, AD 325,the Roman custom was made universal.
Easter was henceforth celebrated by all the churches. The time was fixed, as now, to the first Sunday after the full moon which followed the 21st of March.
Dr. Schaff is very free to note the adoption of heathen festivals by the church because he does not think that the practiceis to be condemned. He says ("Church History"):The English Easter , Anglo-Saxon Oster. German Ostern, is at all events connected with East 
and sunrise, and is akin to eos oriens, aurora. The comparison of sunrise and the natural spring with the new moral creation in the resurrection of Christ, and the transfer of the celebration of Ostara, the old German divinity of the rising health-bringing light, to the Christian Easter festival, was the easier, because all nature is a symbol of spirit, and the heathen myths are dim presentiments and carnal anticipations of Christian truths.The word Easter , from Eostre or Ostara, is by some traced to Ishtar, or Astarte, the Assyrian counterpart of Baal, the sun god, corresponding to the Latin Venus. Sacred eggs were connected with her worship. But whether Easter may or maynot be traced to Astarte, with her licentious worship, it is certain that it is nothing but a relic of sun-worship.
All we care for in the above is the admission that Easter is only a relic of nature-worship.
---We do not accept the suggestion of the identity of Christianity and pagan nature-worship;but we note with sorrow that the pagan-worship of the creature rather than the Creator very early corrupted the Christian church.
E.J.Waggoner