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Happy Easter, Which is Not Named After Ishtar, Okay?

Ishtarrific

Department of Awful Facebook Memes

Megan McArdle

Updated Apr. 19, 2019 2:33PM ET / Published Mar. 29, 2013 1:32PM ET 
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Heritage Images/Getty

My unfavorite new Facebook meme is this bit of sillyness which has apparently been spotted everywhere from the feeds of my college friends to (allegedly) that of Richard Dawkins' Foundation for Reason and Science:

I immediately knew that this was a bit of nonsense for the simple reason that Easter is an English word. The Greeks and Romans called it Pascha, which is why Easter is Pasqua in Italian, Pascua in Spanish, and Paques in French. How exactly did the name of a Canaanite fertility goddess skip all the way to England from the Middle East without stopping in Rome or Byzantium?

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