Ostara and the Vernal Equinox

The vernal equinox occurs on March 20 or March 21 each year and signals the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere (and fall in the Southern Hemisphere).

The Earth tilts at an angle of 23.5 degrees on its axis relative to its plane of orbit around the sun. As the Earth orbits the sun over the course of a year, different places get sunlight for different amounts of time.

An equinox occurs at the moment when the Earth’s axis doesn’t tilt toward or away from the sun. Someone standing on the equator on an equinox can observe the sun passing directly overhead. Additionally, equinoxes are the only two times a year that the sun rises due east and sets due west.

Six months after the March equinox, another equinox occurs around September 22 or 23 and marks the beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere and spring in the Southern Hemisphere. Since the Earth actually takes about 365.24 days to orbit the sun, equinoxes happen around six hours later from year to year, before moving back a day on leap years.

In Europe, there may have been a goddess called Eostre, whose name gives us both Ostara and Easter. The Venerable Bede describes Eostre as a goddess with fertility associations, which loosely connects her to both rabbits and eggs. Author Jacob Grimm, of Grimm’s fairy tales, suggested that eggs were a symbol of early European Paganism.