S2 E11 Why Do We Call It Good? An Easter Deep Dive

Somewhere along the way, Easter started getting labeled as “pagan”—and if you’ve ever heard the name Eostre or seen the debates about rabbits, eggs, and ancient traditions, you might be wondering what’s actually true.

In this episode of Me Again, God, we’re slowing it down and getting honest.

We’re talking about where the idea of Eostre even comes from (spoiler: one 8th-century monk), what history actually supports, and what’s been added later through assumption, culture, and internet debates. No fear tactics. No fluff. Just clarity.

Because here’s the thing—your faith shouldn’t feel shaky every time someone posts a viral “gotcha” about its origins.

We’ll also talk about what Easter is really rooted in, why Passover matters more than most people realize, and how easy it is to confuse cultural symbols with spiritual truth.

If you’ve ever thought, “Wait… have I been celebrating something wrong?”—this one’s for you.

Not perfect. Not polished. Sometimes messy.
 Just you, me… and the truth.

Thanks for listening to Me Again, God with Charlene Condu.
If today connected with you, I’d love to hear your story.

Visit: www.MeAgainGod.com

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You’re not alone in this walk — we’re learning, growing, and coming back to God together, one episode at a time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Okay. I just need to sit with you for a minute before we get into anything. Because today is Good Friday. And I literally sat down this morning with my coffee and I just stopped. And I thought, why do we call it good? Like, think about that for a second. Good Friday. The day that Jesus was arrested, beaten, mocked, nailed to a cross, and died. The sky went dark, the earth shook, and we call it good. That question has always sat a little sideways of me. And today, I don't know, something about sitting here on the actual day, knowing what this Friday represents, I just felt like I needed to do this episode. I needed to talk to you about this. All of it. The whole season. Because here's what I know about the women who show up in this space. You've got questions, just like me. You want to actually understand the faith you're standing in or the faith you're crawling back to. And there is so much around Easter that we just absorb. We we put out the baskets, we color the eggs, we say he is risen. He is risen indeed. And sometimes we don't even know why we do half of it. So today we're going deep. We're talking Good Friday, Easter Sunday, Ash Wednesday, Passover. And yes, we are absolutely going to talk about that bunny. Stay with me. All right, let's start with the question that was haunting me this morning. Why do we call it Good Friday? Well, historians have actually debated this for a long time, and there are a couple of different leading explanations. One theory is that good in this context is an older usage of the word meaning holy or sacred. The same way we talk about good books or a good man, uh, it means righteous. So Good Friday essentially means holy Friday, the day set apart. Another theory, and I love this one, is that it's called good because of what it accomplished, not what happened to Jesus, but what was done for us in the process. The crucifixion was horrible, but what came through it was the most profound act of love and redemption in all of human history. So when we say good Friday, we're not minimizing the suffering, we're acknowledging the purpose, the good that came out of the worst day in history. And I think there's something in that for every woman listening. Some of you have had your own good Fridays, days that were dark and confusing and devastating, that you couldn't call them anything but terrible while you were in them. But when you look back, you can see the hand of God working something holy right in the middle of the wreckage. That's Good Friday. That's the whole thing right there. Now let me walk you through what happened because a lot of us we have a vague outline, but we've never really sat in it. So you see, the night before, what we call Monday, Thursday, the word Monday M A U N D Y comes from the Latin word mundatum, meaning command. Jesus and his disciples had the last supper together. He broke bread, poured wine, and told them to do this in remembrance of him. He prayed in the garden of Ghsem until his sweat was, as the Bible describes it, like drops of blood. If you've ever been so anxious or so grief stricken that your body physically reacted, you understand something of the moment. Then Judas, one of his own, he showed up with the soldiers and identified Jesus with a kiss. An arrest in the dark, a betrayal from someone at the table? Jesus was taken before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, and here's what I want you to catch. Pilate looked at Jesus, questioned him, and actually said, I find no fault in this man. He found him innocent. He even offered the crowd a choice, release Jesus or release Barabas, a known criminal. And the crowd stirred up by religious leaders chose Barabas. The innocent man stood so the guilty man could go free. Sound familiar? That's the gospel right there, in one decision. Jesus was flogged, and I need you to understand Roman flogging was not a slap on the wrist. It was a whip embedded with bone and metal that tore flesh from the body. Many men didn't even survive it, but he did because he still had work to do. Then they pressed a crown of thorns onto his head and mocked him. They put a purple robe on him to mock his claim to kingship, and they spit on him, and forced him to carry his own cross through the streets of Jerusalem to a hill called Golgotha, the place of the skull. At nine in the morning they nailed him to the cross. He hung there for six hours. From noon to three o'clock, the sky went dark. Not an eclipse. We know this because Passover always fell on a full moon when a solar eclipse is impossible. The darkness was something else entirely. At three in the afternoon, Jesus cried out, It is finished, and he died. And I just want to point out, in case nobody has ever really studied that, he died from suffocation. What a way to go. From the top, heaven tore it. Access to God was no longer blocked. The barrier was gone, and it didn't cost us a thing. It cost him everything. Three days later, Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene and the other woman came to the tomb at dawn. They were bringing spices to anoint the body. They were going to take care of him the way women take care of people. That's what we do. We show up, even when it feels too late, even when there's nothing left to do but be present. And when they got there, the stone was already rolled away. Imagine that. They came in grief. They came in loss. They came expecting a sealed tomb and a dead body, and instead they found an angel sitting on the stone that had been rolled away and an empty space where Jesus had been. The angel said, Why do you look for the living among the dead? He's not here. He has risen, just as he said. A woman in a culture that didn't even count women as valid legal witnesses. God chose a woman to carry the first resurrection announcement in all of human history. I need you to hear that because someone might have told you that your voice doesn't count, that your testimony isn't valid, that you're not qualified to speak to what God has done in your life. But the first person commissioned to go and say he is alive was a woman with a complicated past who loved Jesus when it cost her something. That's Easter Sunday. That's the day everything changed. Not just for the disciples, but for all of us. Death was defeated. The enemy's best weapon was broken. And because of that empty tomb, every dark Friday in your life, every night that feels like it will never end, has a Sunday coming. Okay. Passover is not something I have ever celebrated or learned much about. I think we miss something by not at least understanding it because Easter doesn't exist without Passover. The two are inseparably connected. So I dived in, and this is what I learned this morning. Passover is a Jewish holy day that remembers the night God delivered the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt. You probably know the story. God sent ten plagues on Egypt, the last and most devastating being the death of every firstborn son. But God made a way of escape for the Israelites. He told them to sacrifice a lamb, an unblemished lamb, and apply its blood to the doorposts of their homes. When the angel of death passed through Egypt, it would pass over any house marked with that blood. And then he said, Do this every year. Remember this. Don't let your children forget what this blood cost and what it brought. Passover is celebrated each spring, typically in March or April, with a special meal called a cedar. The table is set with specific symbolic foods, bitter herbs to remember the bitterness of slavery, unleavened bread called Maza, because there was no time for bread to rise when they fled, a lamb shank bone, and four cups of wine representing God's four promises of deliverance. The four promises can be found in Exodus 6, 6 through 7. He's speaking to the Israelites while they are still in slavery in Egypt. So one, I will bring you out, which means deliverance from their environment. Two, I will free you, which means deliverance from bondage. Three, I will redeem you, meaning restoration and redemption. And four, I will take you as my people, which means identity and relationship. The whole thing is a ceremony and memory of telling the story out loud so it never dies. Now, here's why this matters to us as Christians. Jesus held the Last Supper during Passover. He was in Jerusalem specifically for Passover when he broke the Maza and poured the wine. He was taking the very symbols of Passover and redefining them. This bread is my body. This cup is my blood of the new covenant. He was saying, I am the lamb, the unblemished one, the one whose blood will cause death to pass over everyone who is covered by it. The lamb that the Israelites sacrificed the night they left Egypt, that was always pointing forward to this, to him, to the cross. Most Christians don't observe Passover, and that's okay. But I think there's deep, profound beauty in understanding it. Because when you understand what Passover was, the cross is understood at a different level. Everything Jesus did in that upper room is now understood at a different level. He wasn't just starting something new, he was fulfilling something ancient. Now let me back up a little and understand Ash Wednesday and how it ties into all of this, because this is where the Easter season officially begins in a lot of Christian traditions. And it's something a lot of women in my world weren't raised knowing about. Ash Wednesday falls 46 days before Easter Sunday, always on a Wednesday, as the name tells you. In 2026, that was March 18th, it marks the beginning of a season called Lent. On Ash Wednesday, in Catholic, Episcopal, Lutheran, and many other liturgical traditions, a pastor or priest will mark the sign of the cross on your forehead in ash. Ash made from burning the palm branches used the previous year on Palm Sunday. And as they do it, they say, Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. It's a sobering moment. In a world that sells us eternal youth and endless self-improvement and the idea that we can curate a perfect life. Someone literally puts ashes on your face and says, You are mortal, you are not God, you need a savior. I think that's actually beautiful. Not morbid, honest. It's the kind of honesty that creates space for real faith. You can't be rescued if you don't acknowledge you need rescuing. Ash Wednesday is not in the Bible. It's a practice developed by the early Catholic Church, drawing on the Old Testament traditions of wearing sackcloth, a scratchy, uncomfortable cloth made of goat hair worn for humility, and ashes as a sign of mourning and repentance. But if you've ever wanted an anchor point, this is where the season starts moment. Ash Wednesday gives you that. Lent, the 40 days following, is traditionally a season of fasting, prayer, and preparation. 40 days echoes Jesus' 40 days in the wilderness. Many people give something up for Lent, not as a works-based ritual, but as a way to create space for God. When that craving hits, that thing you gave up, it becomes a prompt. Pray instead. Some of you are not raised in a tradition that practices Lent or Ash Wednesday, and you don't have to. But if the season has ever felt like it just jumps from nothing straight to Easter baskets, this is the ancient rhythm the church created to help us not miss it. In the Christian religion, much of this is a symbolic ritualism. And as Protestants, protestants, we do not practice symbolism. But this is more about understanding the history and timeline. Okay. I have been waiting for this part. Because every Easter, somebody in the comment section, God love them, is gonna post about how Easter eggs and the Easter bunny are pagan and we shouldn't celebrate them, and how dare we mix the sacred with the secular? And every year somebody else fires back. And I just wanted to give you the actual history so you can decide for yourself where you land. Remember, as you listen to this, it's about the history. A craft project with the kids and decorating Easter eggs is not going to counter your faith and belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus. Let's start with the eggs. The history of the Easter eggs actually has multiple roots, and not all of them are pagan. One of the earliest known connections comes from early Christians in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, who stained eggs red to represent the blood of Christ shed on the cross. Red eggs, the red of the resurrection. This practice spread into Eastern Orthodox Church, where it's still very much alive today. You'll find Greek and Russian Orthodox families dying eggs red every Easter, and they crack them together and say Christ is risen, he is risen indeed. Another piece of the history in medieval Europe. Eggs were a food forbidden during Lent, so the eggs that accumulated during those forty days were boiled to preserve them, decorated, and given as gifts on Easter morning. They were a celebration of the fast being broken. Now there's always a theory some scholars point to connecting eggs to pre-Christian spring fertility symbolism. Eggs as a symbol of new life and rebirth are ancient and cross-cultural. This doesn't automatically make them pagan. The early church was brilliant at taking the universal language of creation and redeeming it, spring, new life, resurrection, those things go together for a reason. Now the bunny. German immigrants brought this tradition to Pennsylvania in the 1700s, where it slowly spread across America. Some scholars point to possible connections with a dramatic goddess of spring named Estor. I'm not Esther. I'm not really sure how to say that name. It's E-O-S-T-R-E, who was allegedly associated with hares or rabbits. And there is significant academic debate about whether she was even a widely worshipped figure or whether the egg and rabbit connections were ever actually tied to her. I think the history is murkier than the internet tends to make it. What we know for certain is that by the time Easter bunnies became mainstream American culture in the 1800s, they were a commercial and cultural phenomenon based around candy companies and grading card companies, not a religious ritual. So here's my take. And you can take it or leave it. The Easter bunny is a cultural tradition, not a spiritual practice. It has no power. And because of that, you don't have to either. Whatever good Friday you're walking through right now, whatever feels like loss, like betrayal, like the sky going dark, Sunday is coming. It always does. That's not a cliche. That's a promise backed by an empty tomb. You are so loved more than you know. Now go and get prayed up and leveled up. Until next time.