Some people say “Put Christ back in Christmas”, but it is is hard for Germanic-language speakers to say “Put Christ back in Easter” when we have adopted the name of a pagan goddess for this festival. Even those Greek and Latinate-language speakers (and English speakers attending Orthodox churches) who use pascha or a derivative of it don’t specifically refer to Jesus. No language (that I have found) uses any word related to Jesus or even resurrection as its usual and natural word.

I started wondering what the most common collocations with Easter are – whether we have been overrun by Easter bunnies and eggs. Not yet, but many collocations are non-religious. Google Ngram Viewer shows that the most common are Sunday, Island, Monday, Day, holidays, week, day, recess, Term and term. 

I am convinced that the correct term is Easter Day, but I seem to be on losing side of that. Easter Sunday has basically always been more common than Easter Day. Easter Week is Easter Day and the six days after (liturgically, we celebrate octaves, being the day and seven days after), though it is possible that some people use it to refer to Holy Week, being the seven days before. Easter Saturday is strictly speaking the Saturday after Easter Day, but most people mean and understand it as the day before, which I call Easter Eve (and refer to the Saturday after Easter). (I suspect that Good Friday will eventually become Easter Friday.) Note that Easter continues for 40 days, until Ascension Day.

Easter recess comes from the UK House of Parliament, and Easter T/term from UK law courts and public schools. So is usage different in the UK and USA? Google’s results for British English are Sunday, Island, Monday, holidays, Day, week, term, day, Term and recess (the same 10 words in a slightly different order) and those for American English are Sunday, Island, Monday, morning, Day, week, day, Seal, term and Term, which omits holidays and recess and adds morning and Seal, and has a slightly different order.

My readers in the USA may be surprised to learn that I had not encountered the Easter Seal before, and immediately imagined the pinniped version of the Easter Bunny. Ummm, no.

For my readers not in the USA Easter seals resemble postage stamps and are sold by the Easterseals charity in the USA and the Canadian Easter Seals charities for fundraising.

When I typed pascha above, Pages for Mac unhelpfully changed it to pasta. Paschal has maintained a more religious flavour (I won’t include its collocations) and Pascha is still basically Latin. Pasta is, of course, entirely culinary.

PS Tues 2nd: One of my nieces and her husband are members of an English-speaking Orthodox church. Even before my sister’s comment below, I messaged my niece to ask what they say. Her response was ‘Usually I just say Easter for both if it’s a non-church person, I think. Maybe specify “Orthodox Easter” or “I’m Orthodox and Easter for us is in 5 weeks…”. At church we usually distinguish “(western) Easter” and “Pascha”.’